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Not to belabour this but, if you want to catch up on the recent bitch slapfest between yours truly and one R. Christopher Edey, you'll notice that what we have here is the rare opportunity to see if a member of the right-wing wankersphere is physically capable of an actual retraction. (We already know that that's beyond anything Weasel Boy is capable of.)
To recap, Mr. Edey accused me of telling a "Category 5 lie," an accusation I promptly fed through the woodchipper. To which Mr. Edey, in a rather depressing display of classlessness in the comments section, reluctantly agreed that, in fact, my original statement "was not technically a lie," as if it was still a lie in some other abstract, philosophical way. It's one thing to accuse someone of lying; it's quite another to accuse someone of that overpowering level of deceit, only to have to admit later that you screwed the pooch.
So, given that Mr. Edey made the initial accusation and, further in his own comments section, wrote:
Do you consider pointing out the obvious mistruths in CC's New Orleans post an attack? I see it more as a public service than anything else.
I think it's only proper that Mr. Edey issue a fairly public and unqualified retraction of his original accusation. Don't think of it as an attack -- think of it as a "public service." Now let's see if Mr. Edey is capable of that kind of mea culpa -- direct, to the point and without the shucking, jiving, tap dancing and goalpost moving that so typifies the conservative wankersphere.
Let's go, Mr. Edey. We're all waiting. (And I don't mean a retraction here -- I mean on your own site, Mr. Edey. Front and centre.)
POSTSCRIPT: And while we're at it, I believe Edey owes a big wet one to the entire community of Progressive Bloggers as well. His article proposed to lay a general smackdown on the entire ProgBlog population, and yet he spent almost his entire post picking on all of three people, with a majority devoted to moi when I wasn't even a member of PB anymore.
Edey criticizes the members of PB for somehow condoning my earlier writings when, in fact, a number of them did take me to task for them, both publicly and privately. It was for just this reason -- to isolate the criticism to myself -- that I chose to leave PB, so they didn't get tarred by association, either fairly or unfairly.
Apparently, such subtleties are lost on Edey who just started swinging, hoping to connect, so I think a second apology is in order here as well.
And again, we're waiting. Tick, tick ...
Shorter Bush administration: "Hey, no one foresaw this overwhelming devastation, we couldn't possibly have predicted this overwhelming devastation, not a single one of us expected this overwhelming devastation and all those people who refused to evacuate should feel at least partly responsible for not leaving in the face of such obvious, oncoming and overwhelming devastation."
For the most part, I don't mind criticism, but I do take offense when those doing the criticizing are full of crap. Like, for example, this dickwad, who tees off on me but can't be bothered to get his facts even remotely correct. A couple examples should suffice, I think.
Let's start where Mr. Edey accuses me of a "Category 5 lie":
Later, this alleged Canadian [alleged?] lets loose with this Category 5 lie:
"It's also amusing that that previous CNN link was titled "Katrina may be 'our Asian tsunami'", given that the U.S.'s pathetic first response to the actual Asian tsunami was an embarrassing $35 million... If the United States was looking for sympathy, they might not have wanted to remind everyone of their own miserly attitude towards other countries' disaster victims."
And where exactly is this "lie"? I make precisely one claim in that quoted passage -- that the United States' initial response in terms of Asian tsunami aid was $35 million. Let's go to the official record, shall we?
The New York Times said on Thursday that the United States has been stingy in its response to the tsunami disaster and in giving aid in general.
The newspaper highlighted in an editorial that the 15 million dollars initially offered by Washington was less than the figure the ruling Republican Party would spend on President George Bush's inauguration next month...
The administration has since increased its aid to 35 million dollars. But the Times said the 35 million dollars remains "a miserly drop in the bucket".
Technically, I guess I have to defer to Mr. Edey. I had forgotten that the U.S.'s initial aid offer was even less than the paltry $35 million I mentioned. In short, the true situation is even more embarrassing for the Bush administration than I had written, there is no lie here, and Mr. Edey is full of shit. But, hey, it doesn't end there.
Mr. Edey continues to embarrass himself with his deluded fantasies regarding the U.S.'s siege of the city of Fallujah, Iraq. I described ...
... the citizens of, say, Fallujah in Iraq, many of whom were forced to hunker down in their bombed-out houses while American bombs and missiles rained down around them.
Mr. Edey begs to differ:
Well actually the Americans gave advance notice of their intentions to the citizens of Fallujah and allowed a week for civilians to evacuate the city.
Did they now? Boy, I'll bet that comes as a rude surprise to the residents of that city who were trapped in it during the seige:
Zaneb, a 13-year-old girl both smiling and serious, watches over the younger children who clamor for the foreigners’ attention.
Then the fathers and uncles come to talk, and I cannot keep up with the rapid Arabic full of stories of suffering.
Our Iraqi friend translates: Most people have lost their homes in the bombing.
Some have lost family members and neighbors.
All are angry.
After awhile we walk to another room, down the hall from the one bathroom that is shared by 40 families. A young man steps forward.
“We did not know the evacuation deadline,” he says. “I left the city by chance on the day the bombs began, and then I could not get back in.
“My brother, who is mentally handicapped, was left behind.
“When we went back after the attack, he was missing.
“I looked on the list of people killed, I asked at prisons, but there was no answer.
“The Americans told me to ask the Iraqi National Guard, and I did, but they gave me no answer.”
“Please,” he says. “Tell this tragedy all over the world. There are whole families who were buried under the rubble.”
In addition, numerous males were simply not allowed to leave the city for the simple reason that they might have been insurgents:
Fajullah residents begged for time to bury their dead in a soccer stadium. Women, children and the elderly were allowed to leave Fallujah, but men under 18 were ordered to stay in the city by Marines.
Families pleaded with Marines to be allowed to take out men, and when Marines refused, some entire families turned back.
I mean, if you can't believe ABC News, who can you believe?
Hundreds of men trying to flee the assault on Fallujah have been turned back by U.S. troops following orders to allow only women, children and the elderly to leave.
The military says it has received reports warning that insurgents will drop their weapons and mingle with refugees to avoid being killed or captured by advancing American troops.
As it believes many of Fallujah's men are guerrilla fighters, it has instructed U.S. troops to turn back all males aged 15 to 55.
In other words, in order to guarantee that they capture or kill all of the insurgents, the U.S. military decided to simply capture or kill every male in Fallujah of military age. Isn't that just delightful? (Not to mention a howling violation of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit punishing a civilian population for the acts of its military.)
I could go on but why bother? If I could give Mr. Edey a couple pieces of advice, I would first suggest he do a little more research before putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Better yet, he might want to give the keyboard back to Daddy until he's old enough to use it responsibly.
From today's National Post TV listings:
Truth or scare
Laura Linney's new film explores an exorcism gone wrong.
Yeah, and you have to wonder how often that happens.
It's just too much fun not to keep pounding on DHS Secretary and lying prick Michael Chertoff based on Tim Russert's grilling of him, although Russert does let him off the hook too quickly in the following exchange:
CHERTOFF: ... And one last point I'd make is this, Tim. We had actually prestaged a tremendous number of supplies, meals, shelter, water. We had prestaged, even before the hurricane, dozens of Coast Guard helicopters, which were obviously nearby but not in the area. So the difficulty wasn't lack of supplies...
To which Timmy, to his credit, responds immediately:
MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Secretary, you say prestaged. People were sent to the Convention Center. There was no water, no food, no beds, no authorities there. There was no planning.
Oooooo ... slap! How does Chertoff reply to being so obviously caught spewing bullshit?
SEC'Y CHERTOFF: My understanding is, and again this is something that's going to go back--we're going to go back over after the fact is-- ...
Jesus Christ. Waffle, waffle, waffle ... clearly stalling, trying to think of something to dig himself out of this hole. Fucking weasel.
SEC'Y CHERTOFF: My understanding is, and again this is something that's going to go back--we're going to go back over after the fact is--the plan that the New Orleans officials and the state officials put together called for the Superdome to be the refuge of last resort. We became aware of the fact at some point that people began to go to the Convention Center on their own, spontaneously, in order to shelter there. And I think it's for that reason that people found themselves without food and water and supplies.
If that's the case, why were people being explicitly directed to the Convention Center? You can read numerous news accounts of survivors clearly being sent to the Convention Center. What for, if there was nothing there for them? Tim misses that, but does catch the second bit of bullshit:
MR. RUSSERT: Well, Mr. Secretary, you said--hold on. Mr. Secretary, there was no food or water at the Superdome, either. And I want to stay on this because...
Yes, Tim! Good point. There was, according to everything I've read, fuck all "prestaged" at the Superdome for all of those survivors. So, yes, Tim, you should "stay on that"! But, sadly, he immediately wanders off course and lets Chertoff off the hook:
MR. RUSSERT: Well, Mr. Secretary, you said--hold on. Mr. Secretary, there was no food or water at the Superdome, either. And I want to stay on this because...
SEC'Y CHERTOFF: Well, my understanding--well...
MR. RUSSERT: I want to stay on this because this is very important. You said you were surprised by the levee being broken. In 2002, The Times-Picayune did story after story--and this is eerie; this is what they wrote and how they predicted what was going to happen. It said, and I'll read it very carefully: "...A major hurricane could decimate the region, but flooding from even a moderate storm could kill thousands. It's just a matter of time. ... blah blah blah ...
And Tim goes wandering off on a tangent, foregoing the painfully obvious opportunity to rip Chertoff a new orifice. What a pussy.
Man, I wish I had TBogg's sources. Starting here, you learn that disaster management for New Orleans was actually outsourced to the private sector. And, oh, what an entertaining story it is. Go read.
Apparently, God is too fucking stupid to find his way back by himself.
(Credit to commenter over at Pandagon.)
Gangway! Christian compassion coming through!
Dawn again points out the absurdity of Planned Parenthood's agenda, this time in regards to their idea of disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Katrina...
So, could someone please explain to me how exactly birth control is something that is critical to people's well-being like food and water are? Is there something about birth control that prevents people from dying from dehydration, starvation or drowning? Are people trapped in or on flooded buildings and other structures in desperate need of birth control? Can birth control be used to rescue people?
"Critical to their well-being." Ridiculous!
You know, given how sanctimonious bigots like Weasel Boy are incessantly railing on about those promiscuous darkies, getting all pregnant at the age of 12 and popping out those young 'uns every nine months just like clockwork, then going on welfare and sucking all that federal money out of responsible, God-fearing taxpayers like Weasel Boy, you'd think he might actually approve of the distribution of birth control to all those folks.
Go figure.
SOME SERIOUS AFTERSNARK: It is amusing that the same people howling with laughter over providing such alleged "non-essentials" as birth control to disaster victims don't see anything untoward with the idea of manipulative Christian missionaries descending on the unfortunate and cramming copies of the Holy Bible into their starving, dehydrated hands.
And I'm betting they're not all that upset with some of those same missionaries actually withholding relief from the sufferers unless they first convert to Christianity:
Rage and fury has gripped this tsunami-hit tiny Hindu village in India’s southern Tamil Nadu after a group of Christian missionaries allegedly refused them aid for not agreeing to follow their religion.
[...] Jubilant at seeing the relief trucks loaded with food, clothes and the much-needed medicines the villagers, many of who have not had a square meal in days, were shocked when the nuns asked them to convert before distributing biscuits and water.
Heated arguments broke out as the locals forcibly tried to stop the relief trucks from leaving. The missionaries, who rushed into their cars on seeing television reporters and the cameras refusing to comment on the incident and managed to leave the village.
Disappointed and shocked into disbelief the hapless villagers still await aid.
Don't let it get to you, readers. Sadly, holier-than-thou, pompous assholes like Weasel Boy will always be with us. All we can do is follow them around and try to clean up the messes they leave behind.
According to a poll displayed here, some 12% of Americans rated the federal response to Hurricane Katrina as "excellent." I'm thinking all of those folks live somewhere other than the Gulf Coast.
(And isn't that a thoroughly all-encompassing title?)
Once more over to Pumpkinhead Russert and his grilling of DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, in which Chertoff is pushing another example of GOP spin regarding accountability. See if you can figure out what it is based on Chertoff's excerpts:
You know, Tim, what we're contemplating now is the fact that we are very, very much in the middle of a crisis. There's a bit of a sense that you get that some people think it's now time to draw a sigh of relief and go back and do the after-action analysis, and there'll be plenty of time for that ... We will have time to go back and do an after-action report, but the time right now is to look at what the enormous tasks ahead are ... I will tell you that my focus now is on what is going to go forward ... The question I would put to people is what do you want to have us spend our time on now? Do we want to make sure we are feeding, sheltering, housing and educating those who are distressed, or do we want to begin the process of finger-pointing? I know that as far as I'm concerned I have got to be focused on, and everybody else in this government, and the president has made this very clear, we have got to focus on moving forward to deal with some very real emergencies which are going to be happening in the next days and weeks because of the fact that we have to deal with an unprecedented movement of evacuees... Obviously, every minute matters in a situation like this.
Did you catch all that? See, there's just no time for discussions of accountability or finger pointing, these people need help now, every minute counts, it's critical that we spend every second and absolutely all of our resources dealing with this crisis, and it would be very bad to get side-tracked by irrelevancies. Got that?
Now contrast that with the fact that the GOP, when it wants to, has no problem at all getting side-tracked:
Moving quickly to fill the vacancy left by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's death, President Bush on Monday nominated Judge John Roberts to the nation's top judicial post...
Bush called on the Senate to confirm Roberts within a month.
So it would be exceedingly irresponsible to discuss accountability with respect to Katrina, but hey, there's plenty of time to talk about the Supreme Court and let's get this done quickly, OK?
Really, the Dems should just tell Bush to fuck off. They should tell him that if there's time to wrangle over Supreme Court nominations, then there sure as hell is time to figure out who's ass should be grass when it comes to Katrina.
And, once again, you just know they're not going to take my advice. I don't know why I even bother anymore.
You really couldn't make this stuff up. There's this:
British Prime Minister Tony Blair led world leaders' pledges of aid to hurricane-stricken areas of the U.S. Friday with an offer to help "in any way we can."
And there's this (hat tip to commenter "maple moonbat"):
British families trapped in New Orleans last night claimed that US authorities had refused to evacuate them as Hurricane Katrina approached the city.
Although assistance was offered to US residents, British nationals were told they would have to fend for themselves. According to those who remain stranded in the stricken city, police had visited hotels and guest houses on the eve of the hurricane offering to evacuate Americans, but not Britons.
I can't even top that with satire. Seriously.
Given that the Republican spin on where to lay the blame for the Katrina clusterfuck is already starting, it behooves us to start cataloging said spin so we know how to respond to it, and a particularly evil example of that spin can be found here:
MR. RUSSERT: There's a CD which is in your department and the White House has it and the president, and you are saying, "We were surprised that the levees may not hold." How could this be?
SEC'Y CHERTOFF: No, Tim, I have to tell you, that's not what I said. You have to listen to what I said. What I said was not that we didn't anticipate that there's a possibility the levees will break. What I said is in this storm, what happened is the storm passed and passed without the levees breaking on Monday. Tuesday morning, I opened newspapers and saw headlines that said "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet," which surprised people. What surprised them was that the levee broke overnight and the next day and, in fact, collapsed. That was a surprise.
Now, let's be clear about what Chertoff is saying here. He's not saying that no one anticipated that the levees would fail. The GOP spinmeisters already tried that lame excuse and got justifiably shredded for it.
What Chertoff is clearly saying here is that no one anticipated that the storm could have hit and passed, and that the levees would have initially held but failed the next day. How depressingly pathetic is that?
First, how is it possible that no one at FEMA or DHS would have considered this possiblity? Is Chertoff saying that absolutely nobody would have had the foresight to think that, even if the levees held during the storm itself, they might have been fatally weakened to the point where they were bound to collapse eventually? It's hard to believe that no one brought that up as a possibility. But that's not even the best part.
What Chertoff seems to be saying is that, from his perspective, FEMA would have had a better handle on the situation if the levees had broken during the storm. That's right -- go back and read Chertoff. He's clearly suggesting that, if things had gone according to predictions and the levees had failed at the height of the storm, well, they would have been all over that scenario.
But, no. Apparently, the fact that the storm had passed and the weather had cleared before the levees went down was a bad thing. Having calm weather rather than howling Category 4 winds and rain somehow made FEMA's job more difficult, that's the official story and they're sticking to it.
Coming soon: "The dog ate my contingency plan."
Via the incomparable James Wolcott, we have this jaw-dropping, unspeakably ignorant and arrogant screed from one of the more embarrassing members of the right-wing wankersphere. I'm particularly amused by the juxtaposition of these two sentiments:
... Therefore, as Americans, we've decided to take a break and bag the world for exactly one year.
All foreign aid is going to become internal aid. [Even Israel? -- CC]
All charitable giving is going to be directed at deserving institutions and individuals inside the United States.
All profits made by US companies will be only be allowed to be reinvested in facilities within the United States.
We'll be running trade on the one dollar in one dollar out basis, so if you want to come out of this year with favored nation status, you'd best have your Visa card out.
For those of you with a lot of your people already living here in the United States and sending money back, well, there's going to be a litle interruption in remittances for a year, but you can just raise taxes on your own people to take up the slack. Enjoy.
Our military men will all be returning home to spend more time with their families. (Time for all you Iraqis to man up and get those guns locked and loaded.)...
... But if we need extra oil and we ask, you'd better think twice before you say no. We'll always have enough in the strategic petroleum reserve for B-52's and our carrier groups. If we have to send them out, they will be, we promise you, in a very bad mood. Very bad.
So ... we're going to pull back, disengage, walk away, leave you to your own devices, show you what American isolationism really means ... unless, of course, we want to invade you and steal your oil. That's different.
This is what happens when the two hemispheres of your brain don't talk to each other anymore.
I still think he could have been a bit more aggressive in cutting off Chertoff when Chertoff was clearly going to avoid the question but, all in all, not a bad performance by Timmy Boy.
Apparently, Russert really can be forceful and eloquent when he takes George's dick out of his mouth.
(CC News) -- Responding to the world's generosity in contributing to disaster relief efforts in the Gulf Coast, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice publicly issued a heartfelt thanks, but cautioned donors about expecting anything resembling actual gratitude in return.
"It's amazing to see the outpouring of aid and sympathy, particularly from poor and destitute countries that the United States has, as an imperialistic aggressor, fucked over for years. It's really quite touching. But I just want to warn them that, in the long run, nothing's actually going to change."
Referring, as an example, to a $25,000 donation from the impoverished country of Sri Lanka, Rice said, "It's so incredibly generous of them, given their lack of resources, to have made that gesture. It won't, of course, stop us from screwing them over on every possible issue, from global warming, international development, family planning or anything else, but it was a nice gesture all the same."
In unrelated news, a spokesman for U.N. ambassador John Bolton issued a press release, acknowledging the generosity of so many of the U.N.'s member countries and describing how, when it came to recognizing their sacrifices, he was going to "crush them like a fucking eggshell."
Now is not the time to start finger pointing and assigning blame related to Hurricane Katrina 'cuz that would be wrong:
In a reflection of what has long been a hallmark of Mr. Rove's tough political style, the administration is also working to shift the blame away from the White House and toward officials of New Orleans and Louisiana who, as it happens, are Democrats.
"The way that emergency operations act under the law is the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials," Mr. Chertoff said in his television interview. "The federal government comes in and supports those officials."
Let the smear job begin.
Digging once more into the bag of feeble excuses, we find this gem:
... Michael Chertoff of the Department of Homeland Security, on Sunday rejected criticism of his agency's work.
"This was not just a hurricane; it was a hurricane that was followed by a flood," Chertoff told CNN's "Late Edition.".
Yeah, and how often do you get that bizarre combination?
- 2001: United States suffers unimaginable catastrophe, world rushes to respond.
- 2002-2005: United States proceeds to treat rest of world like shit.
- 2005: United States suffers unimaginable catastrophe, world rushes to respond.
Rinse, repeat?
UPDATE: I don't think the word "irony" even comes close to describing this:
The United States has accepted an offer of UN assistance following the Hurricane Katrina disaster which has devastated New Orleans and other communities along the US Gulf coast, a UN spokesman said.
One has to ask -- given the Bush appointment of U.N.-hater John Bolton as U.S. ambassador, does anyone in that administration have enough grace or class left to feel at least a little sheepish about this? Or are they just above this sort of thing at this point?
Try to believe the following programming note:
Dr. Phil McGraw and Deepak Chopra discuss healing after Katrina, "Larry King Live," 9 p.m. ET.
Tune in at 9 to see the real faces of evil.
And in the midst of the overwhelming Republican hackery, some of the Democrats are finding ways to embarrass themselves as well. Consider Landrieu, who tried to bullshit CNN's Anderson Cooper with the following spin:
Her condescending filibuster continued: "Anderson, tonight, I don't know if you've heard—maybe you all have announced it—but Congress is going to an unprecedented session to pass a $10 billion supplemental bill tonight to keep FEMA and the Red Cross up and operating."
"Unprecedented" session? What, like this emergency session:
President Bush has signed a bill designed to save the life of a severely brain-damaged woman, after lawmakers passed the measure at a late-night emergency session of Congress.
The president cut short a visit to his ranch in Crawford, Texas and returned to the White House for a chance to sign the measure, which he did at 1:11 a.m. EST.
Apparently, "unprecedented" is in the eye of the beholder.
BONUS SNARK: Not surprisingly, the conservative media are all up in arms about how those nasty liberal media members are bending things all out of proportion. Like here, a hard-right conservative "news" site populated by even bigger assholes than these folks (if that's even physically possible).
Watching CNN this morning and sharing the stage at an outdoor gaggle were two of the sorriest excuses for human beings on the planet, Chertoff and FEMA director Mike Brown.
At one point, Chertoff made it abundantly clear that he had heard the increasing criticism of the government's handling of the disaster but, hey, this was just not the time to get into blame or finger pointing, he had a job to do, there were people who desperately needed help and he wasn't going to waste "one minute" discussing accountability because this just wasn't the time for that sort of thing.
Perhaps he has a point. In the midst of this ongoing tragedy, taking the time to figure out who the fuck is responsible for this fiasco or to start assigning blame would be wrong. So very, very wrong.
It's not like we didn't know this already. There was the infamous phony turkey photo op when Commander Chimpy made his surprise visit to Iraq a couple years back. Now, the photo ops have been taken to a whole new, callous level:
“But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.
And, via Doucheblog, more of the same:
There was a striking dicrepancy between the CNN International report on the Bush visit to the New Orleans disaster zone, yesterday, and reports of the same event by German TV.
ZDF News reported that the president's visit was a completely staged event. Their crew witnessed how the open air food distribution point Bush visited in front of the cameras was torn down immediately after the president and the herd of 'news people' had left and that others which were allegedly being set up were abandoned at the same time.
The people in the area were once again left to fend for themselves, said ZDF.
You are all just props in George Bush's world. Get used to it.
Hey, I got yer Katrina scapegoat right here. Perhaps the funniest passage in the entire piece is this one:
Federal authorities say there is blame enough to go around. In a news conference yesterday, Chertoff cautioned against "finger-pointing" and said no one had been equipped to handle what amounted to two simultaneous disasters -- the hurricane and subsequent levee break.
Yeah, it's not like anyone should be, you know, held accountable or anything for this enormous clusterfuck of a screwup. That would be political.
Oh, my. The dynamics of journalism have certainly changed when CNN just flat-out calls you a liar (emphasis of glorious smackdown added):
Chertoff: Katrina scenario did not exist
However, experts for years had warned of threat to New Orleans
Defending the U.S. government's response to Hurricane Katrina, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff argued Saturday that government planners did not predict such a disaster ever could occur.
But in fact, government officials, scientists and journalists have warned of such a scenario for years...
[Chertoff] called the disaster "breathtaking in its surprise."
But engineers say the levees preventing this below-sea-level city from being turned into a swamp were built to withstand only Category 3 hurricanes. And officials have warned for years that a Category 4 could cause the levees to fail...
[Chertoff] added: "There will be plenty of time to go back and say we should hypothesize evermore apocalyptic combinations of catastrophes. Be that as it may, I'm telling you this is what the planners had in front of them. They were confronted with a second wave that they did not have built into the plan, but using the tools they had, we have to move forward and adapt."
But New Orleans, state and federal officials have long painted a very different picture.
"We certainly understood the potential impact of a Category 4 or 5 hurricane" on New Orleans, Lt. General Carl Strock, chief of engineers for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said Thursday, Cox News Service reported.
Oh, man, this is so becoming cover-your-ass time. Read the whole article, it just gets better:
On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, "This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years."
"Unfortunately, it's coming true," he said, adding that New Orleans "is definitely going to flood."
Also on Sunday, Placquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle referred back to Hurricane Betsy -- a Category 2 hurricane that struck in 1965 -- and said, "After Betsy these levees were designed for a Category 3."
He added, "These levees will not hold the water back."
But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings.
Boy, I hope all you Americans are feeling safer with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on the job. You might want to build a dirty bomb and blow yourself up right now just to save the terrorists the trouble.
(CC News) -- Stung by mounting criticism that it simply wasn't ready for the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA director Mike Brown, during a televised press conference, promised to have far better excuses in place for the next natural disaster.
Said Brown, "There's no question that we just weren't ready for this. All of us at FEMA were sure our Category 3 excuses would be sufficient. Clearly, that just wasn't the case."
Explained Brown, "There's no doubt we were over-confident. I mean, we were sure that simply laying the blame on the folks who didn't evacuate, even if they were poor, old, sick or had no way of getting out of the city, was going to hold up fine. But, sadly, that excuse was just no match for the massive storm surge."
"What made it even worse," continued Brown, "is that all of our really top-tier Category 4 and 5 excuses are currently deployed in Iraq, so we have to make do with what we have. And, as we found out, that just wasn't good enough."
"But, as I stand here," concluded Brown, "I want to promise the American people that we have, even as I speak, pulled hard-working emergency workers off of actual relief work and they're already busy designing stronger, more durable excuses for the next disaster. When they're done, I think the public will see a new set of excuses that we, as a nation, can all be proud of."
In only moderately-related news, the White House announced that President Bush would make another trip to the disaster area since, in the confusion and chaos of his first visit, he totally forgot to rub the head of a bald, black person.
There is one feature of the Katrina relief effort that confuses me ever so slightly which is, why are other countries pledging financial aid given that the U.S. Senate just passed a $10.5 billion aid bill?
Consider the amounts pledged:
AUSTRALIA: "We're going to provide A$10 million ($7.6 million) and the bulk of that money, if not all of it, will go to the American Red Cross," said Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. The Australian government said there may be up to 24 Australians trapped in Louisiana in the aftermath of Katrina.
CHINA: China offered $5 million in aid for victims of Hurricane Katrina which devastated the Gulf Coast ahead of President Hu Jintao's U.S. visit. If needed, the Chinese government is also prepared to send rescue workers, including medical experts, officials said.
JAPAN: Will provide $200,000 to the American Red Cross to assist victims of Hurricane Katrina, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said on Friday. Japan will also identify needs in affected regions via the U.S. government and will provide up to $300,000 in emergency supplies such as tents, blankets and power generators if it receives requests for such assistance, the ministry said.
And so on, and so on. But, mathematically speaking, even Australia's $7.6 million represents less than a single per cent of what is coming from the Senate bill. Naturally, what other countries are doing is laudable but, in the end, their contributions simply disappear into the far larger U.S. amount.
And it's particularly galling to think that that Senate bill amount could have been almost entirely covered simply by what the Coalition Provisional Authority managed to "misplace" in Iraq.
AFTERSNARK: Just so I get in my daily quota of pissy attitude, while $10.5 billion sounds like a lot of cash, I have to wonder how much of it will actually go to help the victims, and how much of it is quietly going to end up in places like this.
All right, what the hell else can happen now?
Fires burn along river; thousands wait to leave
While thousands of people waited to be evacuated from the squalor of flood-stricken New Orleans, two major fires raged along the waterfront on Saturday.
Without water, firefighters were helpless. They were forced to abandon efforts to fight a blaze that threatened to consume an upscale riverfront mall, where looters had been seen earlier.
What next? A plague of locusts?
I added a reference to this to the bottom of an earlier post but, truly, this should be on everyone's reading list:
I think I've told you that I'm into Arab horses. Well, for 3 years [FEMA director] Michael Brown was hired and then fired by our IAHA, the International Arabian Horse Assoc. He was an unmitigated, total fucking disaster. I was shocked as hell when captain clueless put him in charge of FEMA a couple of years ago.
And, by all means, read the comments. Jeezus, this guy makes even Pete Rempel look like Richard Feynman.
Over at Stageleft, a simple observation that it would have been nice for the U.S. and Commander Chimpy to have thanked Canada after 9/11 has been, sadly and predictably, turned by total dickwad "Mike" into a stupefying emotional tirade:
Thanks for hammering one more nail into the coffin of the ” Canadians are self-effacing, modest, ahhwww shucks, no, you’re embarrassing me with your praise and thanks,” myth. (Actually, what I want to know is how you found any space for one more nail).
What’s it going to take for you to stop using Katrina as a vehicle for your anti-Americanism? (I’m not going to waste my time asking you to feel some sympathy for these people. I’d settle for an end to the unseemly sniping).
How about public service announcements on all the major American TV networks, every hour on the hour:
” We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming to ….. THANK CANADA!!!”
Luckily, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams knows exactly how twits like Mike think. In his book "The Way of the Weasel," Adams discusses weasel debating techniques, with technique number one being: "Restate your opponent's ideas using bizarre absolutes and then refute them."
Cue Dilbert and "Mike," in what is clearly a product development meeting:
Dilbert: We should add this feature to our product to make it more useful.
Mike: Are you telling me that not one person on earth will use our product without that feature?!!
Dilbert: You changed what I said into a bizarre absolute.
Mike: Oh, I change everything you say?!
I'm guessing Scott Adams has run into Mike before.
Had some fun reading Timmy's recount of an evening with some 17-year-old Glengoyne, and was amused that he mentioned two of my favourite brands, Lagavulin and Laphroaig (Timmy, note correct spelling of the latter. :-)
So if any of you are in a giving mood, I'm down to my last bottle of Talisker. I do, however, have a tendency, after a glass or two, to lapse into the occasional burst of profanity and vulgarity. Don't say you weren't warned.
P.S. And for you vodka fans, you could do far worse than Canada's own Iceberg Vodka.
Ouch. Steve Gilliard is not a man you'd want to cross at the wrong time.
It's almost cruel to keep pointing out the screaming ineptitude of the Bush administration in how they bungled this entire hurricane rescue operation, but it's irresistible to mention this bit of idiocy:
Unfortunately, the war in Iraq is directly related to the devastation left by the hurricane. About 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is now serving in Iraq, where four out of every 10 soldiers are guardsmen. Recruiting for the Guard is also down significantly because people are afraid of being sent to Iraq if they join, leaving the Guard even more short-handed.
The Louisiana National Guard also notes that dozens of its high-water vehicles, Humvees, refuelers and generators have also been sent abroad. (I hate to be picky, but why do they need high-water vehicles in Iraq?)
There's nothing like sheer, unadulterated incompetence to take a horrifically bad situation and make it worse.
Thank God for those internets, 'cuz if it wasn't for them, first we wouldn't get to appreciate undersecretary of the Homeland Security Department in charge of FEMA Mike Brown for the imcompetent boob that he is.
And we also wouldn't know that folks were itchin' to have his sorry ass removed from that position as far back as January.
And if things hold true to form in the Bush administration, count on Brown being promoted when all of this is over. A Presidential Medal of Freedom wouldn't be out of line, I'm sure.
AFTERSNARK: Ooooooh ... apparently, Mo Dowd doesn't think much of Brown, either.
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.
Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
IT JUST NEVER ENDS. And the Mike Brown accolades just keep pouring in.
HA HA: Oh. Dear.
NOT SO HA HA: TBogg-style.
Just go watch. Time to start a pool -- how much longer will Shepard Smith be working for Fox News?
There's this:
Outspoken critic of Halliburton's contract ousted
A high-level contracting official who has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon's decision to give Halliburton Co. a multibillion-dollar, no-bid contract for work in Iraq, was removed from her job by the Army Corps of Engineers, effective Saturday.
Which, in no way, has anything to do with this:
Halliburton hired for storm cleanup
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
I'm thinking it can't be all that hard to connect the dots when there's only two of them.
You have to hand it to the Republicans -- no matter how bad things get, they never forget to pander to their base:
At one point Friday, the evacuation [of the Superdome] was interrupted briefly when school buses rolled up so some 700 guests and employees from the Hyatt Hotel could move to the head of the evacuation line — much to the amazement of those who had been crammed in the stinking Superdome since last Sunday.
"How does this work? They (are) clean, they are dry, they get out ahead of us?" exclaimed Howard Blue, 22, who tried to get in their line. The National Guard blocked him as other guardsmen helped the well-dressed guests with their luggage.
Welcome to George Bush's America, Howard.
I'm thinking this is going to make for some awkward dinner conversation at some point:
About 80 percent of New Orleans was flooded after its levee system, which was designed for a Category 3 hurricane, failed. Katrina was a Category 4 storm when it struck early Monday morning...
The intensity of the storm was just too much for the levees to handle, Strock said.
They broke at their "final design configuration, so that was as good as it was going to get," he said.
The Corps is studying enhancements that would deal with Category 4 and 5 hurricanes, which had been considered only a remote possibility, he said.
Yeah, I mean, what are the odds, huh?
BY THE WAY ... It's not like this has any bearing on the clusterfuck that is the Katrina rescue operation but the "Strock" mentioned above -- that would be Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, commander of the Army Corps and a man who, if he doesn't like the message, has an unfortunate habit of shooting the messenger.
But it's not like that might be in any way relevant here. Carry on.
"You want me to name the Gulf states? You mean, all of them?"
Shocked, shocked I am, that there is lawlessness in the midst of all this misery:
FEMA 'Surprised' by Lawlessness
The head of the federal disaster relief agency said Friday it's "heartbreaking and very, very frustrating" to witness the virtual anarchy in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and defended the Bush administration's response.
Interviewed on several network morning news shows, Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, blamed emergency assistance delivery problems on "the total lack of communications, the inability to hear and have good intelligence on the ground about what was actually occurring there."
This sounds oddly familiar ... oh, right:
WMD: Bad Intelligence, But More
... Most of Iraq's WMD materials had been destroyed because Iraq believed U.N. weapons inspectors would find them and because they feared disclosures by Saddam's son-in-law following his defection in 1995.
The large question is why American and British intelligence didn't know these things.
Apparently, you just can't use the phrases "Bush administration" and "good intelligence" in the same sentence.
... it's Pete Rempel. Isn't he adorable when he uses adjectives?
(CC News) PARIS, France -- Lance Armstrong's record setting seventh Tour de France victory, along with his entire Tour de France legacy, may be tarnished by what could turn out to be one of the greatest sports scandals of all time. Armstrong is being quizzed by French police after three banned substances were found in his South France hotel room while on vacation after winning the 2005 Tour de France.
The three substances found were toothpaste, deodorant, and soap which have been banned by French authorities for over 75 years. Armstrong's girlfriend and American rocker Sheryl Crow is quoted as saying "we use them every day in America, so we naturally thought they'd be ok throughout Europe." Along with these three banned substances, French authorities also found several other interesting items that they have never seen before, including a backbone and testicles.
Well, OK, maybe not so much:
Overnight, police snipers were stationed on the roof of their precinct, trying to protect it from gunmen roaming through the city, CNN's Chris Lawrence reported.
One New Orleans police sergeant compared the situation to Somalia and said officers were outnumbered and outgunned by gangs in trucks.
"It's a war zone, and they're not treating it like one," he said, referring to the federal government.
The officer hitched a ride to Baton Rouge Friday morning, after working 60 hours straight in the flooded city. He has not decided whether he will return.
He broke down in tears when he described the deaths of his fellow officers, saying many had drowned doing their jobs. Other officers have turned in their badges as the situation continues to deteriorate.
In clearly unrelated news:
The president said he is "satisfied" with the federal government's response to the Katrina disaster, although there is not "enough security in New Orleans yet."
Ladies, are you already feeling down what with the nightmarish disaster of Hurricane Katrina? Well, here's a little more news just to let you know that the Bush administration is quite capable of fucking you over in more than one way at the same time:
The highly regarded women's health chief at the Food and Drug Administration resigned Wednesday in protest of her agency's refusal to allow over-the-counter sales of emergency contraception.
Assistant Commissioner Susan Wood charged that FDA's leader overruled his own scientists' determination that the morning-after pill could safely be sold without a prescription, and stunned his employees last week by instead postponing indefinitely a decision on whether to let that happen.
So who's calling the shots here?
FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford is out of town, but the agency issued a statement Wednesday saying Wood had helped make "significant strides" in advancing women's health and that "her decision to leave is unfortunate as we work toward solving the complex policy and regulatory issues related to Plan B."
Ah, so young Lester has learned well from his Republican masters -- screw everyone over and get out of town. But how exactly did such a total cretin get confirmed for this position?
The FDA's latest delay was a surprise: Crawford won Senate confirmation to begin his job this summer only after promising senators to make a final decision by Sept. 1.
Oh. He lied. That explains it.
Don't like your personal reality? Here, try this guy's:
... back in Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told CNN Thursday that he believes he thinks FEMA and other federal agencies have done a "magnificent job" under difficult circumstances to deal with the unprecedented disaster, citing their "courage" and "ingenuity."
And pay no attention to those dead bodies floating down the sidewalk.
Well, you knew he was going to be a hypocritical slimeball, it was just a matter of when. Weasel Boy, having poked fun at my alleged ongoing obsession with him here, couldn't resist leaving a snotty, sophomoric comment recently on this site, a comment I immediately deleted.
Weasel Boy will undoubtedly, in the near future, post on his site about how I can't stand the heat, that I can't handle his intellectual superiority, that I have taken to censoring his infantile blather. Not at all, I respond.
As I have demonstrated beyond any doubt over the last few days, WB has simply lied to his readers and has never fessed up to that. I can put up with a lot in terms of comments, but pathological liars won't be tolerated here. Thus, WB is now persona non grata at this site.
He's free to stroke himself over at the real Jesusland, or whatever Christ-inspired, holier-than-thou delusion he lives in these days. But here at CC HQ, we have at least minimal requirements for integrity. And, sadly, WB doesn't measure up.
P.S. At the time of this posting, he's still lying to his readers. And, apparently, they don't care. Talk about folks who deserve one another.
Of all of the mainstream online news network, which one do you think has the following pic on their main page -- the pensive, thoughtful, steely-eyed rocket man, taking charge, firmly in command, asserting his alpha male status:
Go on, guess.
Lordy, lordy, will the entertainment never end?
"A lot of people working hard to help those who've been affected, and I want to thank the people for their efforts," Bush said before leaving the White House for a tour of the devastated areas in Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.
"The results are not acceptable."
No problem, folks -- Commander Chimpy is on the case and, by God, heads are gonna roll for this.
(Originally appended to earlier post, now moved up.)
JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!! I don't believe this (courtesy of Cerberus -- good doggy):
Steep U.S. tariffs on Canadian lumber will only make a bad situation worse as impoverished Americans attempt to rebuild in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a U.S. housing advocate said Wednesday.
"This tragedy, coupled with ongoing lumber tariffs, will only further harm lumber consumers - especially those needing affordable housing in the U.S.," Susan Petniunas of American Consumers for Affordable Homes told The Canadian Press.
OK. And how exactly would this work?
A spokesman for the U.S. lumber lobby, meanwhile, said Canadian producers should be exempted from those punitive softwood duties - but only on free lumber donated to the rebuilding effort in Louisiana and Mississippi.
"If Canada wants to do the humanitarian aid and donate their lumber, there would be no duty on free lumber," Scott Shotwell, a spokesman for the protectionist Coalition for Fair Lumber Imports, said in an interview from Washington.
As for suspending the legally-dubious tariffs to give American consumers a temporary price break of more than 20 per cent, Shotwell said only donated lumber should be exempted.
"It would have to be humanitarian. It would have to be free."
Fuck you, you greedy pricks. Even I don't have a sufficient grasp of unspeakable obscenities to adequately convey what I'm thinking at the moment.
Many years ago (and I'm doing this purely from memory so I'll probably muff the details), there was an spisode of "L. A. Law" which featured a young Blair Underwood representing one of his first clients in the courtroom.
The case had something to do with a dispute over assets and, during the proceedings, one of the principals suddenly began having an obvious heart attack. While everyone else in the courtroom quickly rushed to call 911, start CPR and the like, Underwood's character had the presence of mind to immediately ask the judge to (and I'm not sure how best to describe this) have the court seize the assets, in case the man actually died.
There was, of course, an instant uproar as everyone else howled about how Underwood's character could be so heartless, so cruel, so unfeeling, but Underwood stood his ground, repeated his request and the judge, although clearly disgusted, granted it.
Later, in the meeting room of his law firm, Underwood's colleagues were giving him a hard time about how he could have been so callous and, after they were done with him, the firm's leader, quietly, pointed out that Underwood was doing nothing less than looking out for his client. While everyone else was panicking, Underwood understood that, as heartless as it seemed at the time, he had only a tiny window of opportunity to avert a potential disaster for his client and he took it and public opinion be damned.
It's in that spirit that I draw your attention to a noble but utterly misguided letter in today's Grope and Flail, in which letter writer Richard K. Ball of Charlottetown writes (remainder of letter requires subscription):
Canada should offer immediate unconditional aid to the United States. Convoys of softwood lumber and Canadian beef rolling southward to the devastated areas would send a very strong message...
To which I can, with a completely clear conscience, respond: No. Fucking. Way. No wood. No beef. No way. Not until, that is, these issues are resolved.
I'm not suggesting Canada make Katrina's victims suffer even more than they have already since, God knows, they've suffered enough. But these issues -- beef and softwood lumber -- could both be settled in a matter of minutes with a stroke of a presidential pen.
Both of these issues have been going on for freakin' years, so it's not like there's any more negotiating that needs to be done. In both cases, the Americans know full well that they're wrong and it's not like they need any more time for that to sink in. Maybe this could have been resolved before now if Commander Chimpy didn't take sixty-seven weeks of goddamned vacation each year to clear brush and ride his fucking bike.
In any case, you folks down south need emergency shipments of beef or lumber? No problem, just sign here. And here. And, oh, here, too. There we go, we're all set and those trucks will be rolling by tomorrow morning.
There's no other way to do this because, as we all know, the Bush administration absolutely lives by a code of taking advantage of everyone, then reaming them up the ass afterwards. (See "Tony Blair.")
So it's heartless? I really don't give a shit. If the Americans need this stuff so badly, then we have a window of opportunity and it would take five minutes to settle all of it. And if this is a possibility and we don't take advantage of it, then, quite simply, we're idiots.
P.S. And for those Canadian right-wing wanks who will inevitably get all pissed over my lack of compassion yet again, one can fairly ask, where exactly do your loyalties lie? Just curious. And why do you hate Canada?
AAARRRGGGHHHH! It's a tough call, that choice between the Conservatives who are just plain evil, and the Liberals who are just plain incompetent:
Martin had been due to call Bush on Monday to discuss the bitter dispute over softwood lumber.
But after the hurricane struck, Canadian officials agreed with the White House that it would be inappropriate to discuss softwood lumber at this time.
Jesus Christ, Paul. If Condi has time to go shopping for goddamned shoes, then they have time to talk about softwood. Bloody hell.
Given the increase of self-absorbed dickwads who have taken to leaving anonymous comments like, "Hey, awesome blog! I'll be coming back for sure. In the meantime, check out my site for herbal supplements." Or digital cameras. Or how to get a 10-inch woody.
So unless someone has a better idea, I'm restricting comments to registered users only. If you know of a better way to deal with this, I'm all ears. Well, OK, ears and the 10-inch woody thing.
As James Wolcott points out, liberal/lefty bloggers are making a huge mistake not laying the blame for the current Katrina disaster squarely in Bush's lap.
"Man," the conservative wankersphere is saying, "you people are heartless. All those people still homeless and dying and you just want to play the blame game."
Yeah, assigning blame related to catastrophes. That would just be so fucking wrong, wouldn't it?
Yeah, everyone else has pointed it out, so why not me? Feeling the urge to contribute to disaster relief but not sure where to send it? No problem, FEMA is there to help you out with this handy-dandy little list of charities:
Here is a list of phone numbers set up solely for cash donations and/or volunteers.
Donate cash to:
American Red Cross
1-800-HELP NOW (435-7669) English,
1-800-257-7575 Spanish;
Operation Blessing
1-800-436-6348
America’s Second Harvest
1-800-344-8070
...
Hold on ... Operation Blessing? FEMA is suggesting that, right after the Red Cross, you send actual cash to Operation Blessing? This Operation Blessing?
Operation Blessing International Relief and Development Corporation (OBI) is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) humanitarian organization based in Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA. Since 1978, Operation Blessing International has touched the lives of more than 179.7 million people in 96 countries and all 50 states, providing goods and services valued at more than $1.1 billion. Operation Blessing is governed by a national board of directors that includes founder M. G. Robertson and retired COO Robert W. Fanning.
Although these days, "M. G. Robertson"'s friends just call him "Pat".
As Lily Tomlin once said, "No matter how cynical you get, it's impossible to keep up."
Back here, I suggested that one possible way folks could help out with Katrina disaster relief was to consider the plight of family pets trapped there, and contribute to Noah's Wish:
Noah's Wish is a not-for-profit, animal welfare organization, with a straightforward mission. We exist to keep animals alive during disasters. That's it.
Imagine my lack of surprise to find this recent post by none other than super-Christian family man and lying sack of cat turd Weasel Boy:
You know I like my cats but ...
...if it came down to a choice between them and other human beings, my choice will always be for my fellow man. I can always get more pets. That's why I find charities like this to be a waste of time and money.
Guess which charity he's referring to. Go on, guess. Really. You'll never guess, you know.
You ever have one of those moments when you're looking for just the right word?
"I do not have the words in my vocabulary to describe what is happening here," said Ozro Henderson. "'Catastrophe' and 'disaster' don't explain it."
How about "Bush"? Does "Bush" work for you?
Apparently, that good old Christian compassion purely permeates this administration:
FEMA chief: Victims bear some responsibility
The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Thursday those New Orleans residents who chose not to heed warnings to evacuate before Hurricane Katrina bear some responsibility for their fates.
And as we all know, there's no better way to console people trapped in a devastated city with no food or water and surrounded by dead bodies and mounds of human feces than to tell them that it's kinda their fault.
I'm sure they're feeling better already.
Seriously, at this point, it's hard to wrap your head around what's actually happening in NOLA -- police officers having to ask civilians for food and water, rampant looting, snipers firing on hospital evacuees and people literally starting to die waiting for help, all of this in the middle of a city in the most powerful country in the world. It all just defies description.
I'm going to keep up on things via CNN, and by popping over to the Progressive Bloggers, who are staying on top of all this. Other than that, time to give the keyboard a rest. I'm tired.
(Moved to the top (again) as a not-so-subtle reminder.)
Noah's Wish, a not-for-profit organization whose job is to help animals during natural disasters. Even when I dearly want to slap people in general upside the head, I'll still be worried about their pets. (All four of my cats would be happy to vouch for me, when they're not busy horking up mouse parts on the hardwood.)
I'm sending $50. Now it's your turn.
FYI: The twins, when they were still young and adorable and not yet horking up mouse parts.
UPDATE: The whole issue of pets and natural disasters.
Well, you can't say we didn't offer.
IN ALL FAIRNESS, I'm willing to believe that, at the moment, the American emergency operations are so unspeakably fucked up that the Canadians wouldn't be able to help all that much. At this point, it's just impossible to say. But, really, it's pretty freaking embarrassing no matter which way you look at it.
Via Dependable Renegade, we have this from The Gawker:
What does surprise us: Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman.
Hey, Pete ... about that lack of sympathy -- feel free to bite me.
TO BE FAIR, Rice does have some serious press to live up to:
Rice's coat and boots speak of sex and power -- such a volatile combination, and one that in political circles rarely leads to anything but scandal. When looking at the image of Rice in Wiesbaden, the mind searches for ways to put it all into context. It turns to fiction, to caricature. To shadowy daydreams. Dominatrix! It is as though sex and power can only co-exist in a fantasy. When a woman combines them in the real world, stubborn stereotypes have her power devolving into a form that is purely sexual.
Rice challenges expectations and assumptions. There is undeniable authority in her long black jacket with its severe details and menacing silhouette. The darkness lends an air of mystery and foreboding. Black is the color of intellectualism, of abstinence, of penitence. If there is any symbolism to be gleaned from Rice's stark garments, it is that she is tough and focused enough for whatever task is at hand.
That task being, every so often, having security deal with uppity bitches who get all up in her grill. Or whatever.
OH, YES, the blogosphere is all over this one.
Aug 1, 2005:
On Aug. 1, a spokesman for the Louisiana National Guard lamented to a local reporter that the state might be stretched for security personnel in the event of a big hurricane. Dozens of high-water vehicles, generators and Humvees were employed in Iraq, along with 3,000 Louisiana National Guard troops.
"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," the Louisiana National Guard's Lt. Col. Pete Schneider told a reporter from WGNO, the ABC affiliate in New Orleans. Schneider said that in the event of a hurricane, Louisiana would need help from neighboring states.
Aug 29, 2005: The nightmare happens. Quick, time to convene a panel on blogger ethics.
The last couple of days have been some kind of interesting, being as they were an enlightening and disturbing window on the psyche of some folks.
It all started here when, being in a bit of a cranky mood, I opined that I was having a hard time dredging up the requisite sympathy for the victims of Hurricane Katrina for a variety of reasons. Sure, I could have been more diplomatic about the whole thing, or maybe waited until the caffeine kicked in a bit more, but I wrote what I was thinking at the time and there you go.
Predictably, the reactions weren't long in coming from folks like this. My word, but I was a monster, a fiend, a ghoul. Where did I get the nerve to call myself a progressive? And on and on and tediously on.
Ignore, of course, that I wasn't the only one who couldn't get into the spirit of things:
... In fact, to judge by the reaction of some Londoners yesterday to Katrina's rising death toll, Britons seem to feel the United States is overdrawn on sympathy.
Pay no attention to those snotty foreigners, though -- no point beating up on them when we have a local to jump all over.
The curious feature here, of course, is that your humble correspondent is in no way responsible for Katrina. I don't control the weather, I didn't create the storm, I didn't personally cause the levees to fail. I'm a man with a blog. I control words, and that's it, nothing more.
Consider, then, the treatment of the man who, inarguably, is at least partially responsible for this nightmare -- President George Bush. As I (and many others) have already documented in excruciating, nut-breaking detail, this is the man whose administration cut the budget for New Orleans levee restoration, slashed FEMA's budget, gave the crucial wetlands that helped protect New Orleans back to developers, started a totally unnecessary war that depleted several states of their vital National Guard and Reserves and, as a final insult, thoroughly dragged his ass getting back to D.C. where he gave, by all accounts from both the left and the right, a totally lame-ass speech that satisfied no one.
The general reaction from the right-wing wankersphere? (And even from parts of the left?) Man, that CC guy is an asshole, what an incredible jerk, how can he call himself a human being after what he wrote?
And if you presume to instead criticize Commander Chimpy and point out the ongoing horror going on down south? Well, that just won't do, as one commenter writes here:
Do you never stop? I mean here is an act of nature which is disrupting millions of peoples lives, killing scores if not hundreds and making a mess of a large part of the southern US and you want to score political points.
Yeah, criticizing the one man who's actually responsible for this fiasco. How arrogant. How presumptuous. How downright political. Easier to beat up on a snarky blogger than think bad thoughts about the Boy King.
But that's cool. All of these critics have the right to say what they want about what I wrote, just as I had the right to write it in the first place. But let's remember one thing -- when things go from bad to worse to even worse than that, keep in mind that I wasn't responsible for any of it.
But that doesn't really matter, does it?
Then:
Ever grateful to the oil bigwigs who made him financially whole while lavishly supporting the GOP ticket, [Dick] Cheney barely took up his new civic responsibility before launching a war on energy conservation. In his words, the commitment to conservation, endorsed by a long line of presidents of both parties, was valuable primarily as therapy for tree-huggers: "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."
Now:
[George] Bush said Americans should conserve more gasoline in response to the crisis and said he expected Saudi Arabia to do "everything they can" to provide more oil. He said eight refineries are down in the Gulf and "it's going to take a while" to get them going again.
"I would hope Americans conserve if given a choice," he said.
It's purely amazing what a massive natural disaster, indescribable destruction, hundreds if not thousands of dead and hundreds of thousands of homeless will do to your perspective, isn't it?
BY THE WAY, just in case you start getting any ideas, from that same article:
President Bush warned Thursday against price-gouging of gasoline in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and said looters should be treated with zero tolerance.
"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this, whether it be looting, or price-gouging at the gasoline pump or taking advantage of charitable giving, or insurance fraud," Bush said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
That's right, we won't tolerate any fraud or corruption or dishonesty here. That would be wrong.
Everyone's favourite crazy-assed bitch Michelle Malkin manages to outdo even her normal illogical rantings here. Start first with just the title of that piece:
KATRINA: THE WORLD COMES AROUND (SORT OF)
Don't go any further, just re-read the title. "The world comes around ...". Now, in my reality, to say someone "comes around" normally means they used to have one position, but have been persuaded to, in some way, change their minds. So, in Malkin's warped universe, how exactly has the world sort of "come around"?
United Nations Undersecretary-General Jan Egeland--yeah, the same jerk who called America "stingy" during the Indonesian tsunami disaster last year--has come around to offering the U.N.'s help to victims of Hurricane Katrina ...
That's right -- the same man who was adamant that everyone contribute to the previous natural disaster has now "come around" by being adamant that the U.N. would help out with this natural disaster as well. That is some "coming around," as I'm sure you can appreciate.
Honestly, if Malkin were any dumber or more dishonest, she could write for these folks.
The New York Times is less than impressed:
Waiting for a Leader
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end...
Sacrifices may be necessary to make sure that all these things happen in an orderly, efficient way. But this administration has never been one to counsel sacrifice. And nothing about the president's demeanor yesterday - which seemed casual to the point of carelessness - suggested that he understood the depth of the current crisis.
Cue right-wing attack poodles bitching about that evil liberal media.
I was going to expound on this but I see Lynne beat me to it:
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised "no net loss" of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers...
And for those of you who live in North Carolina, well, the news there isn't a whole lot better in terms of protecting your coastline.
BY THE WAY: Lynne also has an enlightening piece on this whole "sympathy" shtick.
You know, things would go a lot smoother if some of these folks just chilled out a little bit:
A private ambulance service says it is being hindered in its efforts to evacuate patients from New Orleans hospitals by the lawlessness in the city and appealed to President Bush to activate the military.
Hey, don't rush the man. Y'all know how tough it is to get back into that groove after a month of vacation. I mean, really, why y'all gotta harsh his mellow and everything? After all, having to view all that devastation from the comfort of Air Force One is, like, you know, hard work.
And while you're figuring out the best way to help out, let me give you some low-key advice and that's to give the Salvation Army a wide berth when it comes to shelling out your cash. Personally, I refuse to have anything to do with the Salvation Army, for a couple of reasons.
First and foremost, they're bigots. This isn't even a dirty little secret of theirs -- the Salvation Army has openly discriminated against groups like married women, non-Christians, and gays, among others, for a long time and nothing suggests that's changed recently.
So what, you ask. As long as the money gets there, isn't that all that counts? Well, as it so happens, it's not even clear that the money does get there. From this 2001 American Prospect piece:
The Bush Administration secretly promised the Salvation Army that it would write a regulation protecting it from state and city laws that prohibit organizations from discriminating against gays and lesbians, according to an internal Salvation Army document uncovered by The Washington Post. In return, the Salvation Army vowed, in what it called a "prearranged agreement with the White House," to help Bush pass his controversial religious-based services initiative. The Christian organization has hired a lobbyist and expects to spend $88,000-$110,000 a month to support Bush's effort.
It's that last part that's so eye-opening -- that the Salvation Army was planning to spend around $100,000 a month of money they almost certainly collected under the guise of charitable contributions for lobbying. In short, whether you knew it or not, charitable donations to the Salvation Army were ending up in Republican coffers.
You, of course, can donate your money any way you want. Personally, I'd stick with the Red Cross and tell the Salvation Army to suck it. But, hey, that's just me.
In the middle of a delicate operation, you really don't want to hear the chief surgeon suddenly saying, "Oops."
Similarly, when you're trying to just survive the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this is also not going to inspire confidence:
With the situation in the smelly and sweltering Superdome becoming ever more desperate, authorities have found a new home for the building's nearly 25,000 hurricane refugees: the Astrodome in Houston...
It was not immediately clear how long the refugees will be in Houston, 350 miles from New Orleans. “We're buying time until we can figure something out,” said William Lokey, chief coordinator for FEMA.
Yeah, Bill, that would be nice -- you figuring something out. Take your time, it's not like there's any pressure here or anything.
Buried in the middle of a Globe front-page article, we have this puzzling tidbit of information regarding Hurricane Katrina relief efforts:
Spearheaded by the federal Department of Homeland Security, the federal government launched an unprecedented emergency response.
Excuse me? Spearheaded by the DHS? How exactly did the DHS come to be running this show? Isn't this sort of the department of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)? Who exactly put the DHS in charge?
But things get a bit clearer if you check out the (new and improved as of July of 2005) six-point agenda for the DHS, whose first point reads, "Increase operall preparedness, particularly for catastrophic events."
Wow. You know, you'd have thought that's exactly what FEMA was all about, wouldn't you? Suddenly, all those FEMA budget cuts are starting to make sense. It's not like anyone needs them anymore, is it?
SPEAKING OF FEMA ... it's weird the kind of stuff you run across through Google, like this piece describing FEMA as a super-secret, alternate government of the U.S. I have no idea what to make of it, it just makes for some strangely amusing reading.
Besides, there's no way FEMA is some clandestine, top-secret unaccountable government agency. We all know that's the DHS.
