September 15
Can we just get a few things straight?

• Even the The Daily Show and Air America are saying Bush took responsibility, but he did not take responsibility. If you look closer at his statement, he included the qualifier, "To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, ...". Remember that he's been working hard to throw the blame on the states and local governments, so it appears in his mind that extent isn't very far.
• Michael Brown deserved to be fired, but he's also a scapegoat. His boss Chertoff also was oblivious and tried to mislead the public in his spinning after, and he was part of the delay.
• No amount of blaming for botched evacuations addresses the central cause of the flood: Bush refused to spend the money on the levees despite the warnings. Nothing changes that, even if you want to believe every state and local government screwed up.
• Congressional Republicans appear to have learned nothing about corruption and hubris. They not only blocked investigations of the Plame leak and Downing Street memos, but they also blocked efforts in both houses to establish an independent commission into Katrina. If you wonder why they keep getting away with this, it's because enough of you keep voting for them. I say it again: when you vote for a Republican for Congress, you elect someone who will put awful people in charge.

September 13
This looks like something I would say: "The neoconservatives have brought these disasters to all Americans, Democrat and Republican alike. Now, they must be held accountable. Bush and his neoconservatives are guilty of criminal negligence and must be prosecuted." However, I didn't say that, nor did it come from another liberal, but rather from a conservative of impeccable conservative credentials, Paul Craig Roberts. Some conservatives have been strong in their criticism lately, but this is the first I know of calling for the acting president's removal. So I ask other liberals, if a conservative will title his column "IMPEACH BUSH NOW ", what are we waiting for? I raised the subject of impeachment at a DFL meetup tonight and the idea is not a consensus position. It is in fact a new one even to many Democrats. I submit however that tying the federal government in knots over this might be a good thing. What would Congress and Bush do with their time otherwise, abolish the estate tax and ruin Social Security? Distraction from such government business might be a good thing.

Perhaps even if removal from office is impossible, pushing for it would force the Republicans to distance themselves from Bush and finally start investigating. Bush has so far enjoyed immunity from investigation for obstructing the 911 investigation, deceiving the public on the causes for invading Iraq, lying about the evidence against Iraq, countenancing if not encouraging torture, holding prisoners without charge or trial, what and when he knew about the Plame leak, corruption in government contracting, alleged electoral fraud, and so far there have been no moves towards specifically investigating his refusal to fund improvements to the levees in New Orleans and his appointment of cronies in vital positions. That's not even getting to the chronic incompetence.

The key thing here isn't specifically moving towards impeachment, but getting investigations. It's no-lose proposition for us. Either we get the investigations, in which case we'll know whether impeachment is warranted and the evidence might be clear, or else the refusal to investigate becomes an election year issue. Remember how the Republicans used relatively very minor corruption among Democratic congressmen as a potent issue. In a way, the GOP has handed us a gift.

I'm not suggesting corruption is the only issue we need. Quite the contrary, I have come to the conclusion that the Democratic party needs to settle upon an Iraq policy, even if there's no hope of implementing a new strategy until Bush is gone. We need to go into the election with more than just reminding voters Bush lied, though we do need to keep saying this to the roughly 40% of the public that still doesn't get it. We also need more than criticism of the dreadful way the war has been run. We need specifically to demonstrate that we have been presented with a false choice of two bad options, pull out and allow a civil war to fill the vacuum, or stay the course where we encourage the insurgency by our presence. A reasonable third choice will resonate with voters who realize Bush has made a terrible mistake.

Katrina likewise changes the political debate, because the poor can see that "left behind" is not only a fundamentalist fantasy novel, but a vivid demonstration of what they mean to Republicans. Despite the media mostly showing blacks in New Orleans, we must make sure the poor whites who have been falling for the 3G agenda (God, Gays, and Guns) are reminded that poor whites were abandoned too. This can reinvigorate the fight against poverty. The budget cutting against multiple warnings about the levees show the need for public investment in infrastructure. The Republicans want government so small and weak it "can be drowned in bathtub". In retrospect that seems a poor choice of words, and I don't mind saying so over and over. This would also be an opportune time to make environmental issues more prominent in the public debate. Global warming might have made the hurricane worse, and it won't hurt to point out that the scientific community that warns against global warming also pegged it regarding Katrina and the levees. Bush dropped the no net loss rule about developing wetlands, and those wetlands hold the water that otherwise turns into floods. Likewise the diking of floodplains makes flooding worse. It seems the Republicans don't get the basic physics that the water has to go somewhere. We should try to help the public get that the Republicans don't get it.

Above all, we need to nationalize the midterm elections, like the Republicans succeeded in doing in 1994. I fear our congressional candidates will shy away from the war and away form the charge they're politicizing Katrina, and try to focus on local issues. They would miss a huge opportunity. This feels like not just 1994, but also 1980, when the country was demoralized and humiliated, and conservatives took the opportunity to seize control of the government, which control they've held ever since. Let us take an idea from the other party, which used the Contract with America in 1994 to focus their campaigns to great success. I call upon the national party to make our own version, with only a small number of items (I recall the Contract with America had ten items, and that's probably enough) and quite specific policies.

September 11
A bit of visual humor for today:

That's the acting president receiving a guitar from country singer Mark Willis, who I'm sure walks around with a supply of guitars with the presidential seal on them and the Bush people had no hand in it. The point is that this photo was taken two days after Katrina hit, and Bush was acting like the whole thing was over. Just for the record, I made up the quote in the caption. Bush never said that, and what's more, I understand Nero played something else and fiddles weren't invented yet. Though thinking about Nero's rebuilding program for Rome being planned before he had a conveniently ruined city to rebuild, the country needs to watch how New Orleans is rebuilt. You know by now how Bush works. He'll want the work to be done not by residents who need the jobs and could be trained in saleable skills, but by his crony contractors. It will be done at huge expense with much of the money unaccounted for, and watch for lots of commercial buildings, fancy hotels, and housing for the affluent while the poor are conveniently removed permanently. All it will take for the bastards to get away with it is for the rest of us not to pay attention.

September 9
A thought about the Republican spin that attempts to pin the blame for the mishandling of Katrina on local officials: it wasn't just the city of New Orleans that had problems, but also low income suburbs, small towns on the Mississippi delta, and the Mississippi coast too. Therefore, to buy the Republican spin, you have to believe the incredible coincidence that every local government in both states failed. It sounds a bit like the odd coincidence that every problem in the last elections favored the Republicans.

While we're clearing things up, Michael Brown, the crony at the head of FEMA, has not been fired. He has merely been recalled to Washington while someone else, hopeful someone competent, takes control of the Gulf Coast. You may be falsely led to believe this is some sort of reprimand or even humiliation, but that would mean you forget one of the banes of contemporary America. Being high in business or government means there is no penalty for failure, no matter how massive.

On a positive note, one of the first objects of my attempt to pick apart conservative lies when I started this blog was Kathleen Parker. However, she seems to have seen the light regarding George Dithering Bush, so let's give credit. She ended a recent column with this: "Instead, he came too late to the disaster and caused even supporters to cringe with every ill-chosen word. He lost not only the politician's fantasy photo op, but he let slip the rarest of opportunities --- that of saving human life and the nation's pride. By his performance in this time of extreme stress, Bush may have revealed a truer self than we were meant to see." I can't resist a little I-told-you-so however. That "truer self" is what we've trying to tell you ever since the first election he stole, or at least since his painful reading of "The Pet Goat".

September 5
Charitably, one might have supposed the acting president wasn't lying when he said he didn't think anyone could have anticipated the levees breaking. He was merely operating under an eccentric definition of "anybody" which didn't include FEMA, the Army Corps of Engineers, The New Orleans Times-Picayune, Scientific American, and the Louisiana congressional delegation. Unfortunately, there's this bit from Newsweek today: "John Breaux, the former Democratic Louisiana senator and close Bush ally, rejected the president's claim that nobody anticipated the failure of the city's levees, saying he talked to Bush about it last year."

It bears repeating: Bush was warned and warned and warned about the threat of the levees breaking and flooding a major metropolitan area, yet he ignored the threat and cut the funding to address it. He appointed syncophants to vital jobs and they performed accordingly. For this, even if we knew nothing about Iraq or 911, nothing about WMDs and Valerie Plame, he ought to have the decency to resign for his failure of this basic government responsibility and he ought to be impeached if he won't go. I ask readers to call upon Congress to begin an immediate investigation of the federal government's role in the New Orleans flood, to get into that backlog of Bush malfeasance that needs investigating, and move to impeachment. If the Republicans continue to refuse to investigate anything that makes Bush look bad, then Democrats should take it as a gift to be used in the midterm elections, and take what steps they can towards impeachment. If you won't fight this guy when circumstance has so weakened him, get out of there so we can find someone who will.

September 4
I saw a quote by the acting president that sounds a lot like what Sean Hannity said Friday: "The tasks before us are enormous, but so is the heart of America. In America, we do not abandon our fellow citizens in our hour of need. And the federal government will do its part."

Let me say this so clearly that even Bush can understand. You did abandon your fellow citizens in their hour of need. The federal government, which allegedly you run, did not do its part. Thousands are dead and a major city destroyed as a result. If you had any decency, you would resign rather than waiting to be removed and after this debacle, even a Congress as corrupt as this one must look into it.

Let me also suggest that the repetition of that platitude indicates "no one left behind" might be a Republican talking point. If so, it will be repeated as long as they think it might work for them.

I may have heard another talking point to tonight, the spin that might be the excuse for Bush's amazing claim that no one predicted the levees breaking. On Meet the Press, Homeland Defense secretary Michael Chertoff said what Bush meant was no one expected the levees to break after they didn't break immediately. Bush was fooled by the day's delay, not by his refusal to listen to repeated warnings. Chertoff says Tuesday's newspaper said "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet," but here's a newspaper story timestamped Monday night reporting that the levees breached. I have a feeling this would have been mentioned on Monday's non-stop TV coverage. So is Chertoff saying neither he nor Bush knew Monday that the levees breached? Both these imbeciles should resign. Unless they really believe they evacuated a whole metro area, which is what Chertoff said in that interview: "We have basically moved the population of New Orleans to other parts of the country, or we're in the process of doing so." No you lying SOB, they moved themselves. You didn't do squat.

If that doesn't convince a person, then here's a damning charge from Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana who has been trying to get the administration to get off its ass and do something:

"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."

Maybe there's more to the story, some innocent explanation, but may I remind readers that I reminded you Thursday about how Bush staged his participation in relief efforts in Florida last year, where the cameras showed him handing out ice, but not the big security effort to put him there that distracted from real relief efforts. If the charge is true, he did it again. It fits the pattern.

In the same press release, Landrieu mentions incidents where FEMA is actually hampering rather than helping things. Different incidents of the same sort were specified by the president of Jefferson Parish, Aaron Broussard, in the same Meet the Press where Chertoff spun madly:

"Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, 'Come get the fuel right away.' When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. 'FEMA says don't give you the fuel.' Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, 'No one is getting near these lines.' Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis."

It must have been a first for Meet the Press to have a guest just fall apart like that on the air. If you suspect this guy is just spinning, watch this video. This is a man who hasn't slept for days, who is drained physically and emotionally, and loses it when retelling the story of how a colleague's mother drowned on Friday after repeated promises help was on the way.

September 2
I sometimes dread turning on conservative talk radio because I know I'm going to hear something awful, yet I figure I need to hear what the other side is saying. That's when being liberal sucks. Today was a prime example. As I was driving home, I heard Sean Hannity saying he wishes the people in the Gulf Coast could hear him, because this whole country was getting behind them (belated, but true) and, get this, he spoke the platitude "no one will be left behind". Why does this idiot think people were still there? They were left behind! There were no buses getting out of town if you couldn't afford Greyhound, no trains if you couldn't afford Amtrak, so what was everyone without cars supposed to do, buy a plane ticket? Were all the elderly and handicapped supposed to ride their bicycles down the freeway? A bunch of people were abandoned and died. How much more left behind do you want?

I switched to Hannity after hearing stupidity from Hugh Hewitt and his guest Fred Barnes. Corpses are laying on the streets and they refer to the mentioning of this uncomfortable fact as "carping". Hewitt suggested what was needed was enterprise zones so they could get some factories. Yes, let's declare this pool of toxic water an enterprise zone, and the private sector will jump right in. In other words, more of the governmental neglect that caused the problem. By the way, at least while I was listening, neither Hannity, Hewitt, nor Barnes mentioned that Bush ignored repeated warnings before and ignored it for days after.

Speaking of the acting president, the reason for the rage directed his way was well illustrated by a couple quotes in today's Star Tribune. Bush said, "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." I'll give him the rest of that, but zero tolerance for looting when people have lost everything, the stores are closed, and no help is coming? An unidentified woman looting a drug store said, "I'm a diabetic. I need test strips. I'm down to two. I don't know if my insulin's any good. It hasn't been on ice." Who knows, maybe the people who can't tell the difference between that woman and people stealing beer and cigarettes to feed their addictions will be more sympathetic when their well-stocked kitchens get flooded to the ceiling.

Following up what I said yesterday about preferring Bush not visit the disaster area and become an extra problem, this bit from the visit he insisted on making:

In St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, just south of New Orleans, victims of the hurricane are still waiting for food and water and for buses to escape the floodwaters, Melancon said. And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.

I've suggested before Bush be impeached because his incompetence is ruining whatever chance there is a for a good outcome in Iraq. I suggest now he has shown the same incompetence here. Why do we tolerate a president who, no matter the situation, makes things worse? If he had any decency, he'd resign. If Congress had any decency, they'd impeach. The ray of hope is that bungled disasters have caused political turnover elsewhere. Maybe the same will happen here.

September 1
The right wing is predictably trying to blame the victims for the flooding in New Orleans. On the Lou Dobbs show tonight, Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, referred to the people who stayed in evacuated areas as those "who chose not to evacuate". This afternoon I heard Michael Medved on his show say the people who stayed "defied" the evacuation order. Another explanation for many who stayed comes from one of the people who didn't have a choice: Tom Pendley of Biloxi, who stayed, said, "I didn't have gas in the car and I don't have the money. It's not like I'm trying to play tough. I just don't have the means to leave." People like him shouldn't be lumped in with the people foolish enough to stay when they had the means to leave, but doing so absolves the lumper of responsibility.

It's not just the people who stayed who are blamed for their circumstances, but also the people living below sea level are blamed for it like is was entirely their choice. Foolish as it was to drain wetlands for more developments, that doesn't explain everything. Look at this graph the Star Tribune published today. Notice how the old part of the city was above sea level, and also how high the levies are keeping the river out. For those who seem to think the city was founded next to levies, think about the physics for a moment. Water drained in the river kept going. Those levies weren't to guard against New Orleans' water, but against water dumped into the river all along the Mississippi and its tributaries. All the way along, the rivers have been diked and levied so flood plains could be developed, and for the like reason have wetlands been drained. These wetlands held a lot of water which is now in the river. The dikes have the effect of forcing the water to go somewhere, and since everyone does it, everyone has to keep building higher. The effect of lost wetlands and floodplains is visible in the levies by New Orleans. That was the somewhere where to water went. So maybe before we feel smug that we're not so vulnerable to flooding, we might want to consider our own responsibility. Maybe that floodplain we diked and the wetland we turned into new housing development made things worse.

On a related subject, there was the photo of the acting president looking out the plane window at the flooding, conveniently with the cameras there to show him being concerned. He didn't actually go to the disaster area which actually is fine with me. With all the chaos, the last thing they need on the Gulf Coast is dealing with presidential security too. However, a year ago, and not coincidentally with the election campaign going on, Bush personally handed bags of ice to hurricane victims in the swing state of Florida. In case you don't remember, here's one of those photos. You don't see all the security set up to let Bush hand out ice while the cameras were watching. If you disagree with me, and think it helps to have the president himself present, then take note that with the election campaign going, there he is. With it over, he was happy in Crawford. Maybe he was enjoying having the flood knock Cindy Sheehan out of the headlines.

Now no, I don't blame Bush completely for the disaster. He didn't cause the hurricane, and he's not responsible for decades of development that eliminated the floodplains and wetlands that would have possibly prevented the flood (though his decision to reverse the no-net-loss policy for wetlands made things worse). However, when he told Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America this morning that no one could have predicted the breaking of the levies, he's reverting to his post-911 coverup method. There were repeated warnings.. Even FEMA warned him. It's understandable he might have missed that warning in 2001, because it came at the same time he was busy ignoring the warnings about Al Qaida.

Here's the thing that will really make Bush look like, well, the opinion I already had of him. There were not only the warnings about New Orleans specifically, there was an increase in the number and severity of hurricanes, 911, and fears of terrorists hitting a major city with a WMD. How could it be the government was this badly unprepared? Al Franken has referred to Bush's ignoring of warnings before 911 as "Operation Ignore". You'd think even Bush would have learned, no matter if he did try to cover up his mistakes then. He surely couldn't fail that utterly to learn from them. Except he did. It appears "Operation Ignore" has a sequel. Guaranteed, the costs of this disaster will be many times more expensive than the preventive measures Bush opposed. Can we please get this guy impeached before the next disaster?

See the archives for earlier entries.