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Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Figure that out all by yourself, Einstein?
Posted by Jill | 3:29 PM

Those of us who live in consensus reality have been monitoring the situation in the Delta since early Sunday morning.

Of course, if you are the King of Planet Delusional, you've been too busy playing golf and showing off a birthday cake and playing your neato keeno guitar with the preznit-shul seal on it, and yukking it up with some hand-picked old folks guaranteed not to give you shit.

So of course if you've been in the hermetically sealed bubble in which you live most of the time, this would be your reaction to the devastation in New Orleans:

"It's totally wiped out," he told aides at one point during the hastily-arranged inspection flight.

[snip]

McClellan said that after viewing one particularly hard hit coastal community, the president noted: "It's totally wiped out."

The spokesman, describing the rare scene aboard the president's plane, said that aides were with Bush, pointing out various sights and that the president was hearing commentary on what he was seeing.

"There wasn't a whole lot of conversation going on," McClellan said. "I think it's very sobering to see from the air. I think that at some point you're just kind of shaking your head in disbelief to see the destruction that has been done by this hurricane."

"This is a major catastrophe," McClellan said earlier. "We are certainly going to do everything from the standpoint of the federal government to make sure the needs are met. This is a time when all Americans need to come together and do all we can to support those in the Gulf state region."

McClellan said the government was declaring the hurricane an "incident of national significance," a designation that triggers a recently developed national emergency plan for the first time and will allow better coordination among government agencies. McClellan said he expects the administration will request a supplemental appropriation to pay for disaster relief and recovery efforts.

Under the national response plan, which was finalized in January, the federal government intervenes only when emergencies exceed what state and local capabilities can handle. Though state and local officials have not formally declared that they can no longer manage the disaster on their own, that is the case, said Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke.

The president decided he should be in the nation's capital given the magnitude of destruction and death caused by Katrina, one of the most severe storms to ever hit the United States.


Isn't that insightful? And why the hell is this such a surprise? And why is McClellan trying to spin this as some kind of great gesture of presidential leadership FOUR DAYS INTO THE DISASTER?

A hastily-arranged flyover, eh? I guess someone finally woke up and decided that it might not be a bad idea for the president to take a gander at what's going on with those poor people he likes to pretend don't exist. Good thing he was in the hermetically-sealed atmosphere of Air Force One, too, because there are corpses floating in the standing water, and the danger of cholera and typhoid increases every day. God forbid he should have to trouble his beautiful mind (TM Barbara Bush) with such things.

The trolls who insist on continuing to visit this site have been on my case all day for "politicizing a tragedy." How is mentioning FACTS politicizing?

FACT: This hurricane was forecast to be a devastating one as early as last Friday -- and Bush continued his vacation.

FACT: This hurricane was a severe Cat 4 storm that hit Sunday morning -- and Bush continued his vacation.

FACT: The levees started to overflow on Monday -- and Bush continued his vacation.

FACT: On Monday, in California, Bush devoted a grand total of 185 out of 3800 words to the hurricane aftermath in his speech -- the worst natural disaster on our soil in our lifetime, and perhaps ever.

FACT: The situation grew dire yesterday -- and Bush was out in Arizona and California spinning his war and his Medicare prescription drug plan -- and playing his gee-tar -- while people waited on their roofs for rescue.

FACT: The Mississippi National Guard has a brigade of more than 4,000 troops in central Iraq. Louisiana also has about 3,000 Guard troops in Baghdad. The guard is deployed in Iraq because Bush doesn't have the balls to ask Americans to sacrifice their sons by instituting a draft in order to get the soldiers his war needs. That the Guard is deployed in Iraq means lower manpower to help out the hurricane victims.

FACT: After 2003, funding for the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project slowed to a trickle. The reason? Cost pressures due to the war in Iraq:


On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

The panel authorized that money, and on July 1, 2004, it had to pony up another $250,000 when it learned that stretches of the levee in Metairie had sunk by four feet. The agency had to pay for the work with higher property taxes. The levee board noted in October 2004 that the feds were also now not paying for a hoped-for $15 million project to better shore up the banks of Lake Pontchartrain.

The 2004 hurricane season was the worst in decades. In spite of that, the federal government came back this spring with the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history. Because of the proposed cuts, the Corps office there imposed a hiring freeze. Officials said that money targeted for the SELA project -- $10.4 million, down from $36.5 million -- was not enough to start any new jobs.

There was, at the same time, a growing recognition that more research was needed to see what New Orleans must do to protect itself from a Category 4 or 5 hurricane. But once again, the money was not there. As the Times-Picayune reported last Sept. 22:

"That second study would take about four years to complete and would cost about $4 million, said Army Corps of Engineers project manager Al Naomi. About $300,000 in federal money was proposed for the 2005 fiscal-year budget, and the state had agreed to match that amount. But the cost of the Iraq war forced the Bush administration to order the New Orleans district office not to begin any new studies, and the 2005 budget no longer includes the needed money, he said."


FACT: Bush and the Republicans have cut 71.2 million in funding for hurricane and flood protection projects at the Army Corps of Engineers in their 2006 budget.

No one is saying that Hurricane Katrina is Bush's fault, and we're not even saying that what has happened in New Orleans could have been prevented. What is undeniable, however, is him showing the same kind of callous disdain and flight response in the face of a tragedy that he showed on 9/11, when he sat in a classroom reading "My Pet Goat" while people in New York jumped to their deaths, then flew across the country as fast as his little airplane could carry him -- and then didn't show up in that city until PR reasons forced him to. Just as he didn't fly over New Orleans until PR reasons forced him to.

There are things a President can't do anything about, but what a president can do is at least give the IMPRESSION that he cares. This president has done no such thing. Crawford wasn't far enough away from the Delta, so he flew to California for what was essentially a campaign trip -- except he isn't campaigning for anything. But he wanted to be surrounded by friendly audiences of well-fed, well-clothed dry WHITE people, instead of the kind of people who have been airlifted off their rooftops the past two days -- needy, frustrated people who need federal aid badly -- federal aid which is not likely to be forthcoming.

And then, come October, when they are able to return to their homes to take inventory of what they've lost, they'll be required under Bush's new bankruptcy bill to receive credit counseling when they file for bankruptcy.
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