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

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 Chertoff effectively rescinded the Bill of Rights to pursue his blinkered witch-hunt.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!"

"They don't have cars? Fuck those savages, man."

"George Bush has many black friends!"

Two days after hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, I took part in a one-day seminar in Washington that dealt with the role of congressional oversight of the executive branch.

No subject is more timely, and Congress – both Democrats and Republicans – needs to ask the Bush administration some very tough questions about what happened in Louisiana and Mississippi after the hurricane struck.

The seminar was co-sponsored by the Center for American Progress and American University and raised some very telling questions about the lack of effective congressional oversight in recent years.

If I were still in Congress, here are the type questions I would want posed to the administration, and I would hope that they would be asked by members of both parties.

1.) Is the new Department of Homeland Security simply an unworkable bureaucracy that is incapable of responding to a major domestic disaster in a timely way?

I was a member of the House Select Committee that created the new DHS. Did we make a mistake by submerging the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) in this massive new department? FEMA seemed to work well as a stand-alone agency. Now, it appears to be frozen.

2.) Have we made a terrible mistake by relying so heavily on the National Guard for our Iraqi commitment? As everyone can now see, the National Guard is essential to maintaining order in times of a domestic crisis. Should we have relied more heavily on the Reserves and active duty forces for Iraq and left the National Guard in place to deal with disasters like Katrina?

3.) Did we make a mistake by not committing active duty forces like the 82nd Airborne immediately to New Orleans once the flooding began? We have used active duty Army units to help with disaster relief in the past and there are units like the 82nd Airborne that are not currently fully committed to Iraq.

4.) One of the issues identified immediately after the 9/11 attack on New York and Washington was the local police and fire departments did not have the right communications equipment to talk to each other in times of an emergency. Once again, we have had a failure of communications equipment. Why hasn’t anything been done in the past four years to remedy this situation nationwide?

Let me emphasize again that these are not partisan questions. They should be asked vigorously by both Democrats and Republicans.

Congress in recent years has abdicated its responsibility to ensure that the Executive Branch is doing its job effectively. There are people who will view any questions posed in the aftermath of Katrina as simply a partisan attack on the Bush administration. That is not the case, and it would be a disservice to our country for anyone to attempt to muzzle Congress at this time because the questions are being posed to a Republican president.

These exact same questions should be asked if the president were a Democrat.

Congressman Henry Waxman, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee, for years has been urging that Congress be more aggressive in asking these types of questions of the Bush administration.

And let me cite a little history: During World War II, then Sen. Harry S. Truman, D-Mo., headed a special Senate committee that tracked government waste in defense contracting. His work wound up saving our country an estimated $15 billion. He was a Democratic senator in a Democratically controlled Senate asking tough questions to a Democratic president. Republicans and Democrats should ask the same type of tough questions today.

And it should be noted that this aggressive oversight by a little-known senator propelled him into the vice presidency and, ultimately, the presidency. So congressional oversight of a president of your own party doesn’t necessarily have to harm your career. It might even pay long-term benefits.

Congress needs to get off its duff and make sure nothing like this ever happens again.

these people are sickening.

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.

Thanks, Ben. Because that's, of course, what so many people have been arguing all along. (FUCKING CONDESCENDING IDIOT PRICK)

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.

I like how the word "did not cause" is now being reiterated as the ultimate excuse for which anything one can be held responsible.

"If you hadn't ran that red light, other vehicles wouldn't have avoided you, swerved, and accidentally hit and killed pedestrians"

"I did not cause the death of those pedestrians."

I'd love to see defense lawyers try that.

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.

As opposed to good-naturedly untrue. replace the word "racist" with "classist", and say that again.

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.

Not that the lawlessness was caused by the obscene delay in "rushing" or anything.

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.

Was Kim Jong II even this disingenuous?

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.

it's a GOOD thing that you let people starve, George. It's GOOD that we're not negative about such things, because that's not constructive.

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.

But it will make it a lot more fun.

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.

You know I WAS going to finally get Ferris Bueller's Day Off on DVD, but now I won't be able to watch that scene without thrusting my fist into the tube.

Also, if you're going to start punching out TVs for that kinda reason, never watch MST3K again, y'know? (But Mike's never come across quite this cravenly in his political talks that I'm aware of, I admit.)