Louisiana Desperately Appealed to Bush for Help One FULL Week Ago

According to Daily Kos.

Bush, however, was on vacation.

My, the shit just flies everywhere on his... [cough] watch.

"The Culture of Life": Where Were They This Week?

Looking for their next Terri Schiavo or anywhere other than at those poor, desperate, defenseless people and animals in NOLA and elsewhere.

Excellent piece; I encourage you to read the entire thing at the Progressive Programmer:

Olbermann remarked that he had heard Rush Limbaugh earlier today saying that those that were still in New Orleans deserved what they had gotten, as they had chosen to live there. Olbermann went so far as to call him, "that Limbaugh". Denouncing the inherent inconsiderate nature of such a statement.

But Sharpton made the point that struck me.

The Right, as embodied by Limbaugh, Frist, Bush, Hastert, DeLay. They would move heaven and earth to save the life of one White Woman in Florida to combat the very idea of euthanasia (which technically it was not). A woman that a decade earlier had lost her ability to so much as ask for help, much less have coherent thoughts about the quality of her own life.And they would sit on their ass and watch as tens of thousands of poor men, women, children, babies, and elderly bake in the New Orleans heat surrounded by water, sewage, gasoline and an abandoned city, now devoid of anyone with the means to have escaped ahead of the storm.This is the culture of life. The culture of life wants to save brain dead white women and unborn children. The culture of life wants you to watch endless non-news about the disappearance of one white teenager in Aruba. The culture of life wants you to support your nation as it kills tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians in its Quixotic quest against a non-threat.

The culture of life wants a zero-tolerance for looters policy to sound authoritative as babies die of dehydration. The culture of life expects you to take care of yourself, and if you can't, then it is your own fault for getting into that situation in the first place. Fuck off. You had your shot. Station in life, where you hang your hat, and whether you have the $40 at the end of the month to pay for the overpriced gasoline to get out of that home in time is all up to you.

Thanks so very much to Buzzflash for this link.

While Bush Did His "I'm the Commander in Chief" Bit in Louisiana

.... food drops were suspended to the desperate and the dying.

Krugman Has the Same Questions We Do

Story here.

I only realized today - finally coming up from my shock and despair - how the rest of the country is mocking us terribly while we refuse aid those people down in NOLA and Gulfport and Biloxi desperately need.

And You Thought I Was Joking About it Earlier

...when I said watch Halliburton step in and make a bundle out of their misery - HalliCheney's modus operandi.

Posted by Vince at Spazzzdic Musings.

Passionate Words About an Abysmal, Criminal Failure

Vince Novak has some passionate words about, links to articles about, and well-placed outrage at the grave, grave conditions that are still playing out in New Orleans. He also shares some truly see-red stuff like this:

According to their website, the American Red Cross CAN NOT enter New Orleans because the Department of Homeland Security has ordered them not to return.http://www.redcross.org/faq/0,1096,0_682_4524,00.html#4524

Aparently its because it would prevent people from leaving the city.

WTF!?!

Is This the Rapture?

I always thought there would be more music. Probably Lionel Ritchie and Marie Osmand stuff with a little pan flute and a superbly sad sounding violin.

FUCK FUCK FUCK - Rehnquist is Dead!

Oh my fucking fucking fucking fucking God.

Hugo Chavez, the Man that Great Christian, Pat Roberstson Wants to Assassinate

... has offered the US relief in the form of cheap oil but of course we did not acknowlegde his offer

Say Hello to

- and definitely drop some cash at - Liberal Bloggers for Hurricane Relief, although desperate creatures go way beyond politics.

Thanks to Skippy for the link.

Unconscionable, Indeed

Posted by Mimus Pauly at the incomparable Skippy:

john howard on the unconscionable dereliction of duty that so distinguishes awol's presidency:

...anyone can make excuses for why this isn't bush's fault, and isn't the administration's fault, and a lot of those excuses might be valid and might be true, but if you want to sit around making excuses for why you can't do anything, then why the fuck do you become the president of the united states in the first place?

Our Tax Dollars at ... er... It's Definitely Not Work...

From Talking Points Memo:

Clearly, the White House is pulling out every stop to argue for the impossibility of predicting what happened. But remember, everyone seems to agree that a Cat 4 or 5 hurricane would have created a storm surge that overtopped the levees. I want to go back and check all the details on this. But my understanding is that Katrina -- which was coming into Louisiana as a Cat 5 -- ratchetted down in final hours and actually hit NOLA as a Cat 3. This is part of what created that brief period in which it seemed that the city emerged more or less intact. The immediate storm surge didn't overtop the levees. But then levees failed and/or some were overtopped.

Whatever the details on that point, whether levees failed or were overtopped, the feds and everyone else had every reason to believe over the weekend that the city was going to be flooded. This scenario was not only predictable, but actively predicted as a likely scenario.
One other point: at Chertoff's press conference, he introduced someone as Deputy Director of FEMA. I assume it was this guy noted by Al Kamen in the Post's Inside the Loop column back on August 1st ...

Michael D. Brown , who runs the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the Department of Homeland Security, sent around a memo a couple of weeks ago saying "effective immediately," his chief of staff, Patrick Rhode , was the acting deputy director.

The Anger is Palpable

People are mad - from red states and blue - wondering how we can spend so very much money on government support disaster programs and bullshit about homeland security and tens of thousands of the poor and vulnerable were left to figure out how to get themselves out of New Orleans.

Six days into it, and things are barely any better.

I've heard numerous Republicans, on screen and off, offer up this, "I am ashamed to be a Republican right now. Pure shame. It's our people in the government and they've done wrong."

I mention this because it struck me strangely to hear party affiliation brought into it. Then I stopped to think.

On One Positive Note

In Vermont today, as I suppose happened many places, dropoff sites were inundated by people, on just a few hours notice, appearing at these sites dropping off water, food, clothing, toiletries, pet food and care, blankets, pillows, batteries, and just about anything else they thought could be useful. Lots of the people donating were people who looked like they were pretty strapped for money themselves... and yet, there they were, out to help those in need.

The effort will continue tomorrow (errrr... later today) before many huge trucks load up and head to Gulfport, Louisiana, the closest they can get to the site of the worst devastation.

Quite a Price Discrepancy

Congress is talking about an emergency $10.5 billion relief package for New Orleans and Mississippi.

OK, but does anyone recall the hurricanes - of much less magnitude - that hit Florida not too long before Election 2004? They allocated $14-$20 billion initially and I read somewhere not so long ago that taxpayers actually shelled out about $30 billion in direct costs for photo ops for George Bush and his chubby baby bro, Jeb, handing out water while they blocked search and rescue operations around them.

So why does so much more devastation result in so much less funding? Couldn't be the color of the faces, could it? Not just the fact Bush isn't looking to be re-selected now.

And...

you know things are serious when coverage actually knocks off update on the missing Natalee Holloway, Paris Hilton's last bowel movement, and what Martha Stewart is doing.

And Damn It...

It took three days for Bush to stop napping to attend to the disaster; Cheney's still on vacation, Condi finished her vacation before she returned, and Denny Hastert's only comment was he didn't think it was smart to bother to rebuild it. The mayor of New Orleans leaves the city.

No local, regional, or federal preparedness for what would happen if one of more of these levies failed and they were bound to fail.

To let people go for days without food, medical care, protection, water, and living in extremely squalid conditions, sleeping with the dead....

Sorry for the Silence

I don't know about all of you, but this week has just stunned me.

I can't eat a bite of food without feeling a bit of guilt, without wishing I could make dinner for every soul in the devastation. Nothing I've been able to do thus far feels like enough. Hell, even though they really only want guest housing close to the Southeast, I've signed my home up for temporary housing for refugees.

And the anger inside me for the lack of planning for the poor blacks or perhaps the poor in general, the staggering sums of money that go to this "security" program or that but which pays no attention to the kind of insecurity delivered by a natural disaster.

Decisions like telling everyone to go to the SuperDome long after it was closed to new people, or telling them to go to the Convention Center when no one was there to lead or feed or bus them to a new location, like not noticing that more than a third of the city had NO ability to evacuate.

The decision the other day to suspend rescue efforts and turn the attention to looting. Then, today, with Bush and the governor of Louisiana saying "Zero tolerance" and "shoot to kill" even if the looting was of people breaking into storefronts to get water and food.

But, I've got to get back here. And I apologize for my absence. Your thoughts, as always, interest me.

Don't We All Feel So Much Better?

The president cut short his vacation so he could fly back to Washington so he could visit New Orleans which is actually really much closer to Crawford than Washington is.

Sounds like a Bush move.

Some of Those Pushing John Roberts as Supreme Court Pick Are Pretty Questionable Themselves

Think Progress brings us an example.

Ronald Rotunda is the law professor who argues that Judge John Roberts didn’t do anything wrong when he “heard arguments about the Bush administration’s policy [on military commissions in Guantanamo] as he was discussing a Supreme Court appointment in private conversations with the White House.”

Yesterday we revealed that Rotunda — who is presenting himself as a neutral legal ethicist — was, until very recently, a paid military advisor to the Department of Defense on military commissions.

It turns out Rotunda is one legal ethicist with a history of questionable conduct. From Newsweek, 9/16/1991:

How does a law professor get appointed to the federal bench? Cozying up to the White House can’t hurt. University of Illinois professor Ron Rotunda submitted his name for a spot last spring. He didn’t get the job — but he’s now part of the PR machine for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. A legal ethics expert, he’s phoned reporters, published op-ed pieces and, at the behest of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray, written an essay absolving Thomas of unethical conduct in a controversial case.