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

it won't get reported for a little while after it happens(maybe 24-48 hours), but stories will get out.

If this is confirmed as truth, the man's life is forfeit. He could never walk the streets of America unprotected.

check this shit out. This is a comment on Interdictor's LJ tonight:

I am a 65 yr. old, white, republican, male, pissed taxpayer.

First I am pissed at the racial crap. Anybody that can look at a human being in torment and care about pigment ain't worth a damn. Has anybody noticed that most of the first responders are white and most of the victims are not? Do not even think about telling me that crap in person.

Second I am pissed at the inconceivably impotent efforts by our Federal Government. I am absolutely furious. I just watched on TV a baby that has been in the convention center for SIX DAYS with inadequate EVERYTHING. I am a real hard old man and I felt tears roll down my face. The Mayor of New Orleans ought to be horse whipped. The Governor of Lousiana ought be tarred and feathered. The President of the mightiest nation on earth ought to be cleaning toilets.

I am one of them well off middle class whites that pays a LOT of taxes. I count it a privledge. I take pride in the response of my home state, Texas, to the refugees.

It ain't about race, it is about stupid and incompetent and arrogant.

If the thin blue line is REALLY this inept, we are ALL in for a lot of misery.

Ray

Something big is happening. People are getting increasingly angry & frustrated, and they're not even in places affected by this.

and they're still gunna vote on repealing the estate tax on tuesday.

oh yeah, and another comment:

Mr. Brown is starting to sound like the former Iraqi Information Minister . . . "No problems there, everything is swell."

Chertoff was a political attack dog in that job, indicting and convicting a raft of Democratic officeholders. But one who Chertoff deliberately let get away was his big buddy, Bob “The Torch” Torricelli, forced to resign his U.S. Senate seat from Sopranoland in a major corruption scandal. Nick Acocella, editor of the respected insider newsletter New Jersey Politifax, recalls that, at the height of the Torricelli scandal, and while Chertoff was U.S. Attorney, he saw The Torch and Chertoff together at a South Jersey Jewish banquet where they embraced and huddled intimately “like twins separated at birth.” One would have thought a federal prosecutor would have kept his distance from a target of criminal investigations that were making daily headlines in the Jersey press.

When Chertoff was named by Bush to head the Justice Department’s Criminal Division--partly because he was a skilled political hitman, who’d also raised a ton of money as financial vice-chair of Bush’s Garden State campaign in 2000-- it’s an open secret in Jersey that he squelched an indictment of Torricelli as a reward for The Torch’s support of key Bush legislation the Democratic Party leadership opposed, including tax cuts for corporations and the very rich. (Many of the fat-cats Chertoff shook down for Bush had also been huge givers to The Torch.)

i keep having flashbacks to Half-Life or something.

Chertoff is a member in good standing in the Federalist Society; a cabal of radical lawyers devoted to the systematic dismantling of the Bill of Rights. Already, they've provided much of the legal rationale for the unlawful detention of aliens, the enhanced powers of the Executive, the indefinite incarceration of POW's and the cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners. They've also made strides in crushing what few regulations still exist to protect both consumers and environment.

Chertoff has been an effective conduit for the Federalist ideology. Following 9-11, he masterminded the round-up of 1100 Muslim suspects; dumping them in prison without bothering to file charges. None of the suspects were provided with attorneys or allowed to challenge the terms of their detention. Instead they were held in solitary confinement, abused, and either deported or released after secret tribunals. Chertoff effectively rescinded the Bill of Rights to pursue his blinkered witch-hunt. His actions made no one any safer, nor were they intended to. They were designed to show how easily legal protections are eviscerated during a national emergency. Don't think Chertoff and co. haven't monitored the affects of hysteria on public sensibilities. For the Bush team, demagoguery is the primary tenet of good governance.

Months after the illegal detentions, the Justice's Dept's Inspector General harshly criticized the draconian and unproductive steps that Chertoff authorized. The General dismissed the arrests as "indiscriminate and haphazard"; a clear violation of basic human rights and civil liberties. His reprimand was shrugged off by the impervious Chertoff, who later admitted to Congress that he would have done the same thing all over again.

in that particular case, troops wound up shooting at them and burning their shanty town to the ground(deliberately going against Presidential Orders)

The wind had barely stopped blowing before Katrina and the storm's aftermath had become the latest front in the nation's political/cultural war. Bush critics are already undermining their own cause with overreaching, as they denounce the president as a racist for allegedly being unconcerned about the suffering of so many black people in New Orleans. But an administration whose FEMA director knew less about on-the-ground conditions in the stricken city this week than the average TV viewer has a real vulnerability.

It will only address the vulnerability with a performance in coming days and weeks that is more in keeping with the GOP's image as the "daddy party," the party of competence, the party that can be trusted in times of crisis. That is the main thing. But symbolism will matter too. No single step would go further to dramatize the GOP's commitment to rebuilding New Orleans than announcing now that the party's 2008 convention will be held in the recovering city. Such a move would signal the party's confidence in the Big Easy's renewal, and put it at the forefront of what should be similar commitments from private actors to do their part to help New Orleans come back.

Critics will call it a transparent attempt to burnish the party's image after the Bush administration "failed" with the initial relief effort. The gesture would, however, reflect the genuine sentiment of Republicans who, like all Americans, want to help a city facing such a bleak future. We heard similar complaints — easily brushed off — about the Republicans coming to New York for last year's convention.

No doubt there will be logistical problems. There were logistical problems putting on big events in New Orleans even in the best of times. But the Republicans held their convention there in 1988, and should return 20 years later. They will go to a city that then will, no doubt, still be scarred by the catastrophe of the last week, but back on its feet, and a perfect venue for a testament to the American spirit. — The Editors

Very odd people.

"Boy, it's great to be here in this building where there was all that death and suffering!"

i'know. i was being sarcastic.

Like every resident of the city trying to kill your doughy pasty incompetent heartless asses?!?!

Cooper: So you're pleased with the Federal government's response?

Lott: I AM pleased with the federal government's response...this is not a time for complaining...I am really shocked at the comments that are coming.

vid here

Here's one part of it:
The silence of many prominent Democrats in publicly criticizing Mr. Bush for his handling of the crisis reflects their conclusion that the president is on treacherous political ground and that attacking him would permit the White House to dismiss the criticism as partisan politics-as-usual, a senior Democratic aide said.

Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, disputed the notion that Mr. Bush's long-term political viability was endangered and said Saturday that he was confident that the administration would be able to push ahead successfully with its entire second-term agenda. "There are a number of priorities and we will address all of them," he said.

same thing with terri schiavo, same thing with cindy sheehan. attacking him would more easily change the situation into "look what this democrats are doing!" i.e. shift them into a different defensive mode. it would get the media types an out to frame this as just more inside-the-beltway partisian bickery

Get Off His Back
By Ben Stein
Published 9/2/2005 11:59:59 PM

A few truths, for those who have ears and eyes and care to know the truth:

1.) The hurricane that hit New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama was an astonishing tragedy. The suffering and loss of life and peace of mind of the residents of those areas is acutely horrifying.

2.) George Bush did not cause the hurricane. Hurricanes have been happening for eons. George Bush did not create them or unleash this one.

3.) George Bush did not make this one worse than others. There have been far worse hurricanes than this before George Bush was born.

4.) There is no overwhelming evidence that global warming exists as a man-made phenomenon. There is no clear-cut evidence that global warming even exists. There is no clear evidence that if it does exist it makes hurricanes more powerful or makes them aim at cities with large numbers of poor people. If global warming is a real phenomenon, which it may well be, it started long before George Bush was inaugurated, and would not have been affected at all by the Kyoto treaty, considering that Kyoto does not cover the world's worst polluters -- China, India, and Brazil. In a word, George Bush had zero to do with causing this hurricane. To speculate otherwise is belief in sorcery.

5.) George Bush had nothing to do with the hurricane contingency plans for New Orleans. Those are drawn up by New Orleans and Louisiana. In any event, the plans were perfectly good: mandatory evacuation. It is in no way at all George Bush's fault that about 20 percent of New Orleans neglected to follow the plan. It is not his fault that many persons in New Orleans were too confused to realize how dangerous the hurricane would be. They were certainly warned. It's not George Bush's fault that there were sick people and old people and people without cars in New Orleans. His job description does not include making sure every adult in America has a car, is in good health, has good sense, and is mobile.

6.) George Bush did not cause gangsters to shoot at rescue helicopters taking people from rooftops, did not make gang bangers rape young girls in the Superdome, did not make looters steal hundreds of weapons, in short make New Orleans into a living hell.

7.) George Bush is the least racist President in mind and soul there has ever been and this is shown in his appointments over and over. To say otherwise is scandalously untrue.

8.) George Bush is rushing every bit of help he can to New Orleans and Mississippi and Alabama as soon as he can. He is not a magician. It takes time to organize huge convoys of food and now they are starting to arrive. That they get in at all considering the lawlessness of the city is a miracle of bravery and organization.

9.) There is not the slightest evidence at all that the war in Iraq has diminished the response of the government to the emergency. To say otherwise is pure slander.

10.) If the energy the news media puts into blaming Bush for an Act of God worsened by stupendous incompetence by the New Orleans city authorities and the malevolence of the criminals of the city were directed to helping the morale of the nation, we would all be a lot better off.

11.) New Orleans is a great city with many great people. It will recover and be greater than ever. Sticking pins into an effigy of George Bush that does not resemble him in the slightest will not speed the process by one day.

12.) The entire episode is a dramatic lesson in the breathtaking callousness of government officials at the ground level. Imagine if Hillary Clinton had gotten her way and they were in charge of your health care.

God bless all of those dear people who are suffering so much, and God bless those helping them, starting with George Bush.

? I mean, it's goofy, but it's strenuously goofy.

Hillary HATES Chertoff btw. From DemocracyNow.org:

In the mid-1990s he was Republican counsel for the Senate committee that investigated the Whitewater affair involving former President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary. He has been an appeals court judge for the 3rd Circuit based in Philadelphia since June 2003 after he was confirmed by 88-1 in the Senate. The sole vote against him that day - as well as in his 95-1 confirmation to head the criminal division in 2001 - came from Hillary Clinton.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/09/04/national/04storm.3.583.jpg

"Dammit why are you people bothering me? Well I have my friends here to help!"