Bush and his pre-Katrina Declaration of Emergency

docmercer--banned · Sep 8, 2005

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edub69 · Sep 8, 2005

Bush has been working hard for the last five years to take the word "incompetent" to new levels.

docmercer--banned · Sep 8, 2005

Ebu:

funny .... well said!

919 · Sep 8, 2005

Enough. It's Over.

by Hunter

Thu Sep 8th, 2005 at 10:35:22 PDT

"The bottom line is that despite the fact the president was strapped with two governors who bungled this crisis badly, in the end it is the president who sends in the National Guard and FEMA relief. The president's suggestion that the size of this storm caught all by surprise just doesn't get it. His administration was 48 hours late sending in the National Guard and poor Americans got raped and killed because of those mistakes."

-- Joe Scarborough, MSNBC

When Joe Scarborough and ultraconservative Family Research Council head Tony Perkins are on television discussing the government's failed response to the Katrina disaster... when Tucker Carlson is wading through storm waters with a dazed expression but an odd, new fire in his eyes... when Michelle Malkin takes time out from thoroughly out-frothing has-been Ann Coulter in order to call for FEMA head Michael Brown to be fired... I'm sorry, but the administration spin is spun. It's over. I'm not saying well-funded hacks won't be back with another angle tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, but when even partisans like that are calling you out, your spin isn't so much "tough" as just pathetic and an embarrassment to your country. For once in Bush's sheltered, spoonfed existence, he needs to put Karl Rove and the political machine of his government in a corner for a few days, and get around to doing some actual governing.

Everybody recognizes the delayed and ineffectual Katrina response as a massive failure of government. Everybody, sans a very few straggling and lonely pundits and bloggers for whom Bush will never, ever topple from his gilded pedestal. (And while those selected pundits are oft-used for their pure circus value, it's not like they had any broad credibility to start out with -- a hack is a hack.)

Do the state and local authorities share some blame? I'm sure they do, and we need to find out. But now-gutted FEMA and Homeland Security, which apparently have become nothing more than dumping grounds for Bush-Cheney campaign hacks needing paychecks, managed to bungle the national response so utterly that, for several critical days, it simply was non-existent. Yes, even in Republican-run Mississippi. Yes, even in the Louisiana parishes that were not flooded by the New Orleans levee breaks.

And yes, the President and his administration has now tried to bluster and blame-game their way through that horrific response, once they figured out the deaths were costing them polling points, proving once again that for this White House, image trumps actual government every day of the week. Tom DeLay has yanked his noose around the ostensible Republican "leadership" to warn against investigation, proving once again that there is literally no number of American deaths -- even when worst fears put the numbers in the tens of thousands -- which Tom DeLay finds important enough to act upon.

The administration said it was keeping us safe from terrorist attacks, or at least had a plan for responding to them; turns out, it can't even respond to disasters that have been broadly foreseen, and which come with days of prior warning. We need to find what's wrong, and fix it. Immediately.

That's only a "partisan" issue if you truly care about your party more than your country.

Which, as it turns out, some people do. And they're sticking out like sore thumbs right now.

919 · Sep 8, 2005

Investigate

by kos

Thu Sep 8th, 2005 at 09:36:44 PDT

The right wing bloggers are running with claims by the Red Cross that state officials kept them from going in too soon. The geniuses at Powerline conclude:

The Democrats may need to re-think their calls for an investigation.

See, that's the difference between us and them. They put their party above the country, and would rather stiffle a real investigation than be forced to shoulder any blame.

We say, "investigate away", and let the chips fall where they may. If any Democrats share the blame, then so be it. We need to know what went wrong, who f'd up, and how we can prevent this sort of thing from happening again. If Blanco or another Democrats gets fingered in this epic screwup, that's okay.

But the wingers don't see it that way. "Rerthink their calls for an investigation"... Jeez. Talk about projection, as though our motivations are the same as theirs. As though we look at the Gulf Coast and think, "hmmm, how can we best protect Democrats who may have had a hand in this mess..."

Unlike them, we place country first, party second.

Armando is right -- one party is calling for an independent investigation, willing to get to the truth irrespective of which party's at faily. The other party wants a whitewash. We all know which is which.

Update: Oh, and here's the fact about that Red Cross allegation:

“MARTY EVANS, RED CROSS PRESIDENT AND CEO: Well, Larry, when the storm came our goal was prior to landfall to support the evacuation. It was unsafe to be in the city. We were asked by the city not to be there and the Superdome was made a shelter of last resorts and, quite frankly in retrospect, it was a good idea because otherwise those people would have had no shelter at all.”

In other words, the Red Cross was kept out before the storm, not after. But Like I said, that's just about irrelevant at this point. There's no doubt that state and city officials made blunders. Everyone would make mistakes in a disaster of this magnitude. Let's get them all out in the open so we can properly assess what went wrong and what can be done to fix it.

docmercer--banned · Sep 8, 2005

Maybe the top statement of 2005:

For once in Bush's sheltered, spoonfed existence, he needs to put Karl Rove and the political machine of his government in a corner for a few days, and get around to doing some actual governing.

Great commentary, 919!!!