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

yeah, i'm sure it's just distancing at this point, but still the fact that he feels that comfortable breaking ranks is noteworthy..plus that particular statement was (scarily) probably 100% true.

I like how CNN just uses the word "clueless" as a matter of course:

(See video of CNN asking why FEMA is clueless about conditions -- 2:11)

Bush to women: "There's a Salvation Army center that I want to, that I'll tell you where it is, and they'll get you some help. I'm sorry.... They'll help you.....
Woman 1: "I came here looking for clothes..."
Bush: "They'll get you some clothes, at the Salvation Army center..."
Woman 1: "We don't have anything..."
Bush: "I understand.... Do you know where the center is, that I'm talking to you about?"
Guy with shades: "There's no center there, sir, it's a truck."
Bush: "There's trucks?"
Guy: "There's a school, a school about two miles away....."
Bush: "But isn't there a Salvation center down there?"
Guy: "No that's wiped out...."
Bush: "A temporary center? "
Guy: "No sir they've got a truck there, for food."
Bush: "That's what I'm saying, for food and water."
Bush turns to the sister who's been saying how she needs clothes.
Bush to sister: "You need food and water."
Damn, it reads like a Saturday Night Live skit.

you guys don't know newt very well if you think he's always been about crowing the party line. i mean, i don't like the fucker, but he's not a goosestepping aparatchik or whatever they were called. and there's no way he's ever running for anything ever again.

NO, KEVIN: Kevin Drum wants to say that the difference between conservatives and liberals is that liberals believe in funding organizations like FEMA or the Corps of Engineers and conservatives don't. Nuh-huh. Real conservatives believe that the state should do a few things that no one else can do - defense, decent public education, police, law and order among the most obvious - and leave the rest to individuals. Funding FEMA and having a superb civil defense are very much part of conservatism's real core. It's when government decides to reshape society, redistribute wealth, socially engineer, and take over functions that the private sector can do just as well that conservatives draw the line. The reason I'm mad as hell over Katrina is precisely because I'm a conservative and this kind of thing is exactly what government is for. Bush in this sense is not now and never has been a conservative. A man who explodes government spending but can't run a war or organize basic civil defense is simply a fiscally reckless incompetent. If this were a parliamentary system, we'd have a vote of no confidence. Instead we have three years of more peril.

Everybody knows this but Newt. I agree that he doesn't have a prayer of winning anything, and might not even actually run, but he's very much paving the way for a potential candidacy in '08. He's all but confirmed that he's considering it.

But whatever his motivations, I also agree that he's always been capable of the occasional burst of off-the-reservation candor.

"Feeling the pressure, Bush confers with Tom Green on what to do next."

Bush: "zzz..."

Bush: Response to Katrina Was Mishandled

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
6 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Scorched by criticism about sluggish federal help, President Bush acknowledged the government's failure to stop lawlessness and help desperate people in New Orleans.

"The results are not enough," Bush said Friday in the face of mounting complaints from Republicans and Democrats alike.

Remember, Brownie's doing a great job!

oh yeah, and dig this quote:

"Where it's not working right, we're going to make it right," the president said after walking through a devastated neighborhood of Mobile, Ala. "Where it is working right, we're going to duplicate it elsewhere."

note the fine print(as it were):

There will be a special introduction by WABC's Sean Hannity and tickets go on sale this Tuesday, 9/6 at 10am. All tickets are $77 (plus fees) and are available by calling Ticketmaster at 212-307-7171 or just check back here.

hey, i guess Ticketmaster gotta pay their rent, too, right?

C&L vid here (server still probably overloaded)

"I'm gonna fly out of here in a moment."

"I believe the town where I used to come to from Houston, to enjoy myself -- sometimes a little bit too much -- will be rebuilt."

Hey, Ray Nagin's with him -- wait, no more press conferences?

he's a nice guy from lexington, but he's a drummer and an art student-type, so he's just a bit off. i had to restrain myself from yelling at him over the phone. i should have sent him this link

Remember my earlier point that disaster management in New Orleans had been privatised, the 'catastrophic hurricane disaster plan' having been handed over to Baton Rouge-based Innovative Emergency Management last year? Watching this nightmare unfold, I've been wondering why no fucking one is asking what exactly IEM got paid for.

It's turning out to be very hard to find out, for rather startling reasons.

In my first post on this, I quoted their original press release:

IEM, Inc., the Baton Rouge-based emergency management and homeland security consultant, will lead the development of a catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans under a more than half a million dollar contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

(continued at the link...)

Scratch that. Make fun of the president all you want. But teasing a hurricane victim based on his appearance is a bit low.

Consider Pleasant Plains' e-mail exchange with his coworker today and you realize that what to *you* may seem like commonsense is not necessarily so to others. Far too many, I'd guess. Thus my note -- forward where necessary.

Ah, the wonders of privatization.

Carter wasn't the only loser that year. Clinton lost his first re-election campaign because of the crisis at Fort Chaffee.

(That, and raising car tags fees.)

September 2, 2005 13:50:59
The Deadly Cost of Being Poor
St. Petersburg - We are over the top in New Orleans now. We are at the point where the level of grief, frustration, and helplessness boils over everywhere. Headlines in Tampa and St. Petersburg simply said “Chaos” and “Anarchy.” This is now a case of total government failure, and a national disgrace. This is a collapse of the national will even while demonstrating the strength of the human spirit.

Helene O’Brien, ACORN’s National Field Director, called me in the afternoon weeping about the TV film of people dying in the Convention Center and yelling that we had to do something, because our people were dying. What could we do? What works?

So, we put out a call on the email alerts and to all of our members to all their Congressperson and demand that the poor of New Orleans and the victims of this disaster get immediate help. Some of our offices are calling for sit-ins in the offices of their representatives until they know there is help.

Is this a decision or a cop-out? It’s a nothing, but it simply a way to allow everyone to do something in a situation where there is almost nothing we can do at the depth of our powerlessness.

My daughter, now a real organizer, talked to me at mid-night from the Tampa office where she and other young organizers had been making calls and running off flyers because they wanted to do something, so they were doing what they knew how to do. It was hard to tell her that there was no way to move 100 people at the Site Fighters Conference to a Congressional office. There were no busses. There was no gas. Maybe at the end of the conference we could have everyone made a cell phone call to the 800 number for Congress at the same time, so that they could do something.

There was silence.
She said it was lame.
It is lame.

I’m ashamed that we have worked so hard for so many years to organize so many thousands of lower income families and built so much power in so many areas and absolutely in New Orleans, but it turns out simply to not mean much when the price of being poor is reduced to dollars and cents in a disaster and converted to life and death.

She thought the government was killing people. She felt that she was watching genocide in her hometown, because people were largely black and all completely poor.

I thought it was not genocide, but a breakdown, an implosion, a level of incompetence at an extreme level.

But, thinking now this becomes simply a distinction without a difference. Either way it is inarguable that if this was not happening in the poorest city in America, we would not have so quickly recreated the conditions of global south in our own deep south. Either way one is shocked to see so clearly and to know so fully that if this were not happening to people so poor and largely African American, this would not be happening.

At the bottom line as an organizer one learns that sometimes it is not a question of doing the right thing or the wrong thing, but at least of doing something, allowing people to act in some way, to have a voice and to speak strongly with that voice.

Even as it turns out, that no one is willing to listen.
Or act.
Please help us and do something.
Now.

OK everyone... we must think outside the box to get help into our city! Here's what I propose we do to get a government response faster:

1. Announce they are giving late term abortions down at the Convention Center
2. Spread the rumor that they're thinking about disconnecting the feeding tube of a (white) woman in a coma at one of the hospitals still standing.
3. Ask a calm, mourning, middle aged woman to camp out for peace along Canal Street.

In this moment, we have to remember they are part of us, Americans who love their country and are part of our national community. In this moment, it is hard because our hair is clean and our clothes are washed and our eyes are not glazed with hopelessness. But these are our brothers and sisters, and we have to remember this not just for them, but for us. We must finally recognize that when any of us suffer, we are all weaker; it affects us all...

Whether you think I'm a stupid bitch for staying or not, the fact remains that because of us staying dozens of people got fed for free on Monday and early Tuesday as we cooked up the food in our kitchen and served it without asking for money. People were able to come and get water, food, drinks and good spirits because we stayed. And when we did decide to leave, we took people with us that otherwise had no means of getting out of the city, even though they were piled on top of each other in the van and we had to drill holes in abandoned cars' gas tanks to get enough fuel to leave the city. We were on the road for the past two days, dropping people off where they needed to go, staying with friends and family, or catching flights home...