September 2005 Archives

As Arianna Huffington explains, the circumstances surrounding New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail and agreement to testify to the grand jury in the Valerie Plame case only leads to more questions about how she and the New York Times have handled this situation.

So it defies credulity for Miller, Sulzberger, and Bill Keller to keep insisting that Libby’s earlier waiver was coerced when Libby says that it wasn’t. I don’t have much good to say about the vice president’s chief of staff, but I don’t doubt that he knows the difference between being coerced and acting on his own free will. How deep is the Times’ contempt for its readers that they really think they’ll buy the “Oh, Judy finally has the right waiver” line?

The truth of the matter is there is no way that the New York Times editorial claiming “it should be clear…that Ms. Miller is not going to change her mind” can be squared with Ms. Miller changing her mind. And there is no way to accept at face value Miller’s grandstanding about “fighting for the cause of the free flow of information.” Who is she still trying to convince? Herself?

Can someone explain to me how Bill Bennett continues to have a role in our national punditry? Especially after this statement:

But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Hello, hockey fans. Ever wonder how the practice of selecting the "three stars of the game" got started? Eric at Off Wing Opinion has the answer.

Why won't the Bush Administration follow the law and reimburse our soldiers who have had to go out and purchase their own body armor to protect themselves?

The Washington Note's Steven Clemons has the latest information on this continuing Bush Administration outrage.

Can someone please remind me how the Republican Party can claim to hold a monopoly on supporting the troops?

As the right-wing attack machine gears up to try to destroy the man who dared get an indictment of (former) House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, ThinkProgress does an excellent job of reminding us all about The Truth About Ronnie Earle.

For example, those pesky facts such as how he has prosecuted four times as many Democrats as Republicans during his career.

Hmmm...perhaps that climate change thing is a problem. The New York Times' Andrew C. Revkin reports about changes that should worry us:

The floating cap of sea ice on the Arctic Ocean shrank this summer to what is probably its smallest size in a century, continuing a trend toward less summer ice that is hard to explain without attributing it in part to human-caused global warming, various experts on the region said today.

It also appears that the change is becoming self sustaining, with the increased open water absorbing solar energy that would be reflected back into space by bright white ice, said Ted A. Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which compiled the data along with NASA.

"Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold," Dr. Scambos said. "The consecutive record-low extents make it pretty certain a long-term decline is underway."

Vice President Dick Cheney had surgery yesterday. Instead of just admitting that fact, Cheney lied to GOP donors about why he was missing a fundraiser -- saying that he was dealing with disaster coordination and relief instead of readying himself for this serious operation.

As the Washington Note's Steve Clemons rightly argues about this lie:

This is (still) not the Soviet Union. Elected leaders should not mimic former Politburo members and say that they are out doing work for the nation when they are really at home (or dacha) ill, or out of commission.

Despite my intense frustration with this administration over the Iraq War and Cheney's recklessness that has damaged American prestige and position in the world, TWN wishes the Vice President well in this surgery.

But still. . .be straight with the American people, even would-be Republican donors.

A bit belatedly, let me add my own "hear, hear" to the one offered by James Wolcott to these on-target remarks written by Denis Hamill:

"I wish I had a bullhorn to shout just how tired I am of hearing about how wonderful George W. Bush's 'bullhorn moment' was.

"It will go down as one of the worst moments in American history because when he stood on the smoldering ruins amid the dust of the dead it was through that bullhorn that Bush's Big Lie was first shouted to the world that the people who knocked down those buildings would soon be hearing from us.

"It might have been a fairly good, better-late-than-never moment if all Bush had done was use that bullhorn to launch a war on Al Qaeda. It might have escalated into a great piece of historical stagecraft if we'd just gone into Afghanistan and stayed the course on a noble quest to kill Osama Bin Laden and all his Al Qaeda cowards who murdered our people.

"But the words that echoed through Bush's bullhorn into the smoldering 16 acres of lower Manhattan, the words that resounded across the grieving outer boroughs and the sorrowful suburbs and the stunned globe, were but an orchestrated setup for a grander diabolical scheme."

Atrios is right:

The question isn't really how many Mike Browns are there. The question is when will they be replaced by competent people?

For this White House, it is all about politics and public relations. Now, they want to get the president to regain his swagger:

Most of all, White House aides want to reestablish Bush's swagger -- the projection of competence and confidence in the White House that has carried the administration through tough times since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bush likes to say his job is to make tough decisions and leave the hand-wringing for historians and pundits. He almost never entertains public doubt, which is part of the White House design to build a more powerful presidency. The term "strong leader" appears in at least 98 speeches he has given during his White House years, according to a database search, and was the subtext of his 2004 campaign strategy. He favors provocative language, declaring that he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" and taunting Iraqi insurgents to "bring 'em on."

What I suppose we are not supposed to remember is that it has been 1,469 days since the promise to get Osama bin Laden "dead or alive" or that 1,708 U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq since the "bring them on" comment.

Perhaps it may be time for a little less provocation, and for a little more competence, from this White House?

Wow...it has been a few days since I last posted. Sorry about that. It's been a crazy week.

Since I don't post enough about sports, here are a few items from the past couple days:

That said, yesterday was quite a football day. First, my beloved Bowdoin College Polar Bears won their opening day game for the first time since 1991 -- a thrilling 22-21 victory over the Middlebury College Panthers. Any win over Middlebury is a good win (and I have additional reasons for savoring a win over this particular opponent).

To put that into some perspective, I was working the statistical table at that last Bowdoin opening day win. That does not just seem like a long time ago. Alas, it was.

Unfortunately, the team from which Middlebury stole their helmet design, the Michigan Wolverines, emphasized just how laughable that #3 early-season ranking was by losing to Wisconsin. It's going to be another one of those years.

Also of note was the Bowdoin women's soccer team's great 3-0 victory over Williams College. Williams has often been a great obstacle for the Bowdoin women's soccer team. I would have loved to see what appears to be such a dominant victory.

Finally, in a great move, my Washington Capitals provided what may be one of the few bright moments of this 2005-06 season when they announced that local guy Jeff Halpern is to be the team's 12th captain.

In hockey, the captain is actually a big deal -- a real leadership position, on and off the ice. It's a tremendous honor.

Halpern is the only player in NHL history to hail from Maryland. He grew up watching the Caps. He played youth hockey for the little Capitals. He came to his hometown team as an undrafted free agent. Since then, he was worked and worked to make himself into a quality player.

I'll be quite happy to watch him wearing the "C" this year on the ice.

Oh, my. Congressional Democrats actually showed a little spine and have refused to participate in the Republicans' proposed whitewash Katrina investigation.

Yes, even our Democratic leaders somehow found the courage to oppose lending a bipartisan sheen to a panel on which Republicans had the majority and Democrats did not have full subpoena power.

It is always nice to see a little common sense break out. Now, let's actually try to make the need for an independent investigation an issue, okay?

Scientists are growing increasingly worried about the new avian flu. It's possible impact? ABC News' Brian Ross outlines a scary scenario:

It could kill a billion people worldwide, make ghost towns out of parts of major cities, and there is not enough medicine to fight it. It is called the avian flu.

This week, the U.S. government agreed to stockpile $100 million worth of a still-experimental vaccine, while at the United Nations Summit in New York, both the head of the U.N. World Health Organization and President Bush warned of the virus' deadly potential.

Worse, the United States appears to be far behind other countries in aquiring doses of a potential treatment for this flu.

It appears that the Republican strategy to rebuild their political ratings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is to spend huge sums of money -- of course, without much oversight, accountability, and transparency.

The huge sums of money are needed. But just as necessary are oversight, accountabiliity, and transparency in the spending of these funds. And we need look no further than Iraq to see that the Bush Administration is fond of none of those latter three concepts.

Josh Marshall rightly expresses the big potential problem here:

Maybe you want to spend $200 billion on rebuilding the Delta region too. Fine. Something like that will probably be necessary. But don't fool yourself into thinking that what's coming is just a matter of a different chef making the same meal. This will be Iraq all over again, with the same fetid mix of graft, zeal and hubris. Cronyism like you wouldn't believe. Money blown on ideological fantasies and half-baked test-cases.

You could come up with a hundred reasons why that's true. But at root intentions drive all. You'll never separate this operation or its results from the fact that the people in charge see it as a political operation. The use of this money for political purposes, for what amounts to a political campaign, tells you everything you need to know about what's coming.

Sometimes the radical Republicans surprise even me. I thought they might let a decent interval go by before trying to turn the Hurricane Katrina relief effort into a radical conservative test case.

How foolish of me. As Jim VandeHei and Jonathan Weisman write in the Washington Post:

Bush already has dispatched his top strategist, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and other aides to assemble ideas from agencies, conservative think tanks, GOP lawmakers and state officials to guide the rebuilding of New Orleans and relocation of flood victims. The idea, aides said, is twofold: provide a quick federal response that comports with Bush's governing philosophy, and prevent Katrina from swamping his second-term ambitions on Social Security, taxes and Middle East democracy-building.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), a Bush ally, said the recovery effort provides conservatives with an unusual opportunity to test ideas that have been hard to sell on a national scope, including vouchers to cover education for dislocated students and tax incentives for business investment. "There are a whole host of ideas being looked at," Kyl said.

Yep. That does sound like a political campaign.

Do you feel confident about where this is headed?

Knight Ridder reports that it may not be the person who was fired earlier this week. We may have to look a bit higher up the chain of command. As Jonathan S. Landay, Alison Young and Shannon McCaffrey write:

WASHINGTON - The federal official with the power to mobilize a massive federal response to Hurricane Katrina was Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, not the former FEMA chief who was relieved of his duties and resigned earlier this week, federal documents reviewed by Knight Ridder show.

Even before the storm struck the Gulf Coast, Chertoff could have ordered federal agencies into action without any request from state or local officials. Federal Emergency Management Agency chief Michael Brown had only limited authority to do so until about 36 hours after the storm hit, when Chertoff designated him as the "principal federal official" in charge of the storm.

Josh Marshall is right: we need to get to the bottom of this. As he writes:

This is a description rather than a direct quote. And the specifics of just what was said matter. But if the account is accurate, the contention seems to be that an US Army policy -- presumably intended for warzones -- trumps the decision of a US federal court on American soil. And I don't think you've got to be much of a wild-eyed civil libertarian to find that a tad problematic.

There are good reasons why we place such copious restrictions on the use of combat troops on American soil -- not because there's something wrong with the Army but because the training for war-fighting and policing civilians and/or disaster relief are quite different and the two don't easily mix.

Oops. As Professor Juan Cole writes:

The final text of the Iraqi constitution has still not been worked out, and so the United Nations cannot begin to print it in several million copies so that Iraqi voters can read it before the October 15 referendum. It is going to be very difficult to get the printing and distribution done with only a month to go.

The Washington Post's Dan Froomkin writes:

Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you've been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?

Maybe not so much.

Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.

But, as Brad DeLong notes, this new President Bush is something about which our reporters have long known. Yet, they refused to write about it. Instead, they gave us the Republican talking points about our calm and decisive leader who makes crisp decisions.

So, in my mind, the question here is not just about a president who refuses to deal with unpleasant facts. The issue here is a so-called liberal media that has refused to tell this story since then Governor George W. Bush announced his intention to seek the presidency.

What, precisely, has been their agenda?

Atrios rightly extends his appeciation to the reporters and editors at the New Orleans Times-Picayune and other local outlets for their heroic work during and after Hurricane Katrina.

I have been loading and reloading the Times-Picayune and WWL Television web sites several times a day since this crisis began. The journalism is really first rate.

If you are interested in the Katrina story, you would do well to see what these reporters are putting together each day in the face of challenges and personal tragedy.

While most Americans are understanably focused on the Katrina disaster, it is worthwhile to take a look at a diplomatic problem being created by UN Ambassador John Bolton. Steve Clemons links to a story in The Guardian:

The British government is mounting a huge diplomatic effort this weekend to prevent the biggest-ever summit of world leaders, designed to tackle poverty and overhaul the United Nations, ending in chaos.

The Guardian has learned that Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, has made a personal plea to his American counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, for the US to withdraw opposition to plans for wholesale reform of the UN.

He has asked Ms Rice to rein in John Bolton, the US ambassador to the world body.

Mr Bolton has thrown the reform negotiations into disarray by demanding a catalogue of late changes to a 40-page draft document which is due to go before the summit in New York on Wednesday.

Newsweek's Evan Thomas has put together a must-read story about how President George W. Bush failed to grasp Hurricane Katrina's severity until days after the deadly storm hit.

The reality, say several aides who did not wish to be quoted because it might displease the president, did not really sink in until Thursday night. Some White House staffers were watching the evening news and thought the president needed to see the horrific reports coming out of New Orleans. Counselor Bartlett made up a DVD of the newscasts so Bush could see them in their entirety as he flew down to the Gulf Coast the next morning on Air Force One.

How this could be—how the president of the United States could have even less "situational awareness," as they say in the military, than the average American about the worst natural disaster in a century—is one of the more perplexing and troubling chapters in a story that, despite moments of heroism and acts of great generosity, ranks as a national disgrace.

We have a president who refuses to see reality. Who has his aides so scared that they are afraid to tell him the truth. Who went to bed without acting on Monday after hearing a request for help from Louisana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Who did not appear to fully understand the dire situation under a confrontation with Louisana officials on Friday!

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of U.S. citizens suffered. Thousands died.

This is beyond reprehensible.

(Hat tip: Americablog.)

Although, as Think Progress notes, the Bush Administration refuses to admit the obvious.

It's been four years since the September 11 terrorist attacks. Four years since that tragic day where nearly 3,000 people lost their lives.

Have we largely wasted these past four years?

Osama bin Laden remains at large (it's been 1,455 days since President Bush promised to get him "dead or alive").

Hurricane Katrina exposed how little we have prepared for attacks -- be they from natural causes or terrorists. As this front page story in today's Washington Post explains about our national capital area (which you may think would be a priority for homeland security planners):

On the fourth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the nation's capital lacks a comprehensive way to tell people what to do in a state of emergency, especially a terrorist attack with no warning, according to law enforcement and Homeland Security officials involved in emergency preparations.

We have moved from a time of national unity to a time of political polarization -- largely because our political leadership has chosen to divide us.

We have not been asked to sacrifice. We have not been asked to reduce our reliance on foreign oil -- the same substance that helps bankroll the terrorists who seek to kill us.

Instead, we have been asked to go to the mall and accept huge tax cuts for the rich.

It has been four years. Is homeland security nothing more than a campaign issue? A useful political tool?

It's been four years. I fear we have precious little to show for it.

One of the tragic stories that will emerge from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is how the horrible new bankruptcy bill will impact on those people struggling to keep their lives together after the storm.

As the Los Angeles Times editorialized on Friday:

As the Times' Peter Gosselin reported Wednesday, the new bankruptcy law treats those affected by a natural disaster the same as the deadbeat who spent it all on luxury cars, jewelry and cocaine.

Thankfully, some forward-thinking Democrats have submitted legislation that would lessen the burden of the new bankruptcy bill on those impacted by Hurricane Katrina.

For a great discussion on this important subject, take a look at the Warren Reports blog on TPM Cafe. You'll see how it targets natural disaster victims, health care victims, the middle class, and small business entrepreneurs.

But the credit card companies? They do well. Priorities, you know.

Taking up an Instapundit reader's challenge, Kevin Drum recaps the backgrounds of the last four FEMA Directors, those who have served under both Presidents Bush and President Clinton.

Guess which president actually had the gall to hire someone with emergency response experience?

My friend JR had an appropriate reaction to this story in the e-mail she sent:

I want these racist cowards rounded up and shamed for the untold death and misery they caused.

Update: Digby has the transcript of an interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in which he mentions this immoral behavior last week.

Josh Marshall quotes a Wall Street Journal story that shows how military recruiters are working what they hope is a target-rich environment at the Houston Astrodome.

Mark Schmitt makes this important point about the scandal surrounding FEMA Director Michael Brown's padded resume:

But it's actually more like Bernie Kerik's nonexistent "nanny problem" because, in reality, Brown's resume wasn't all that padded. Sure he changed "Assistant to the City Manager" to "Assistant City Manager," added a couple of honors he hadn't gotten, and made it sound like he'd been practicing some law when he hadn't. But a real resume padder adds a couple of degrees from Stanford and a stint in Special Forces.

The important point is this: Even if every single thing on Brown's resume was true, it was still an obviously pathetic set of qualifications to run a major federal agency, or even to supervise the 30 lawyers in a federal agency's general counsel's office. (emphasis in original)

You really should read this post by James Wolcott. The last paragraph is especially good.

Think Progress catches Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers lying to the American people. Here's what he had to say when asked about the Department of Defense's response to Hurricane Katrina:

The headline, of course, in most of the papers on Tuesday — “New Orleans Dodged a Bullet,” or words to that effect.

Or, would you like to explain how you would dare say that when, as Americablog helpfully compiled in one image, all of these newspaper headlines have far different headlines? Or, perhaps General Myers could explain this Stars and Stripes cover with the headline "Devastation."

Or, to clear all this up, perhaps General Myers could share the really small circulation newspaper that only he and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff seem to have read last Tuesday.

Even better: how about you drop the false talking points and start telling us what really happened.

At a time when people were dying in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, FEMA thought it would be great to use firefighters not as rescue workers but as props at press conferences and as community relations volunteers.

That's bad enough. But, then, when these firefighters decided to protest in a small way, a pathetic FEMA spokesperson has the gall to question the firefighter's commitment to their nation and to the rescue effort. As Salon War Room writer Tim Grieve explains (subscription required, or you can watch a short ad to read for free):

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that FEMA put a team of 50 firefighters on a flight to Louisiana Monday morning. Their mission: Stand beside Bush as he toured the devastation -- just possibly not the best use for highly trained emergency workers, and a job we thought was obsolete in the digital age anyway.

FEMA defends the use -- or nonuse -- of the firefighters, saying that their chiefs knew they were being sent to the Gulf Coast to work as community-relations officers for FEMA. Apparently, that job entails working as human props and passing out FEMA's phone number. "There are all of these guys with all of this training and we're sending them out to hand out a phone number," an Oregon firefighter told the Tribune.

On Monday, the Tribune says, some firefighters began to take off their FEMA-issued T-shirts in protest. A FEMA spokesman responded by questioning the firefighters' willingness to help in a time of need. "I would go back and ask the firefighter to revisit his commitment to FEMA, to firefighting and to the citizens of this country," FEMA spokeswoman Mary Hudak told the Tribune. (emphasis added)

Or, as Atrios (to whom I owe a hat tip for this entry) explains:

So, if you object to having yourself be flown across the country so you can be a human prop for the president instead of actually using your skills to help the citizens of this country then you need to revisit your commitment to "the citizens of this country."

Fascist.

Really, just how many circles of hell down must we go to find an appropriate place for government officials who think it is a good idea to do photo-ops for the president with emergency workers at a time when those workers are needed to save lives.

See this Daily Kos post to learn more, and to see the nice photos that were taken of our president.

Via Laura Rozen, an incredible story written by the Los Angeles Times's Ellen Barry:

In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

Thousands of human stories have flown past relief workers in the last week, but few have touched them as much as the seven children who were found wandering together Thursday at an evacuation point in downtown New Orleans. In the Baton Rouge headquarters of the rescue operation, paramedics tried to coax their names out of them; nurses who examined them stayed up that night, brooding.

Transporting the children alone was "the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, knowing that their parents are either dead" or that they had been abandoned, said Pat Coveney, a Houston emergency medical technician who put them into the back of his ambulance and drove them out of New Orleans.

"It goes back to the same thing," he said. "How did a 6-year-old end up being in charge of six babies?"

Laura Rozen quotes from a Wall Street Journal summary of all the communication failures that happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and rightly demands to know:

How in the world four years after 9/11 has this not be fixed? What did people really need last Monday and Tuesday? Information. That was what was so utterly third world seeming about the chaotic aftermath, the fact that DHS officials in Washington somehow had no idea what all of us were seeing at the Convention Center, as if it was happening in Sudan. It's genuinely startling to realize how bad things are four years after 9/11. What in the world has the Bush administration been doing for four years? Truly, what? Imagine after a terrorist attack -- when no one would have been evacuated -- how unprepared the government would be to respond. It's third world standards. What have they been spending all the money on? Who's supposed to be accountable if not the directors of FEMA and DHS?

Keith Olbermann says some things that needed to be said about the government's response to Hurricane Katrina. (Click here to watch via Crooks and Liars.)

No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes. Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska. But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?

I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.

Former First Lady Barbara Bush had this to say after visiting New Orleans residents currently living at the Astrodome:

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (she chuckled)--this is working very well for them."

Barbara Bush, let me say what you are so fond of saying to others. I am through with you.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said this yesterday on Meet the Press:

Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet," because if you recall the storm moved to the east and then continued on and appeared to pass with considerable damage but nothing worse.

The Newseum has over 400 frontpages archived but we suspect that the one with the "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet" hed exists primarily in Chertoff's mind.

We are seeing a coordinated Bush Administration effort to blame local and state officials for the horrible response to Hurricane Katrina.

Larry Johnson, in this must-read post at TPM Cafe, highlights the lie at the center of that argument. Johnson asks:

Why did the Bush Administration fail to act according to the National Response Plan they created in December of 2004 to deal with an incident like Katrina?

The NRP establishes policies, procedures, and mechanisms for proactive Federal response to catastrophic events. A catastrophic event is any natural or manmade incident, including terrorism, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the population, infrastructure, environment, economy, national morale, and/or government functions. (emphasis added)

Except, of course, the ongoing political damage control and smear campaign.

The Washington Post's Jim VandeHei reports:

One reason for the slow White House response, said a Republican who has been in contact with several officials, is that so many high-level officials and aides were on vacation. Vice President Cheney, for instance, was in Wyoming and did not return unil Thursday, and Nicolle Devenish, the president's top communications adviser, is getting married in Greece with a number of mid-level aides in attendance.

That would explain why the White House smear machine is running at full speed.

As part of that smear effort, as Josh Marshall points out, a "senior Bush official" lied on background to a reporter in an attempt to place the blame for the failed response on the desk of Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.

Lied on a point of fact. The Washington Post has issued a retraction -- but did not name the "senior Bush official" that lied to its reporter. Once again our so-called liberal media lets a lying Bush Administration official hide under the cloak of background.

Marshall then connects the dots:

Monday's Times, not surprisingly, confirms that the White House damage control operation is being run by Karl Rove and Dan Bartlett.

Add it up.

And who will report this out?

Yesterday I checked out the on-line stream of WWL-TV's coverage of the Hurricane Katrina emergency.

WWL is now broadcasting out of the Louisiana Public Broadcasting studios in Baton Rouge. It is, I believe, just great and extremely knowledgable coverage. If you get tired of cable news coverage, you may want to check out this broadcast from WWL's web site.

I wish I had checked it out earlier.

A radical anti-government agenda does have its consequences.

Josh Marshall on the White House's shift the blame strategy:

It's almost awe-inspiring to see the level of energy and coordination the Bush White House can bring to bear in a genuine crisis. Not hurricane Katrina, of course, but the political crisis they now find rising around them.

As we noted yesterday, the storyline and the outlines of the attack are now clear: pin the blame for the debacle on state and local authorities.

So, let's get all the facts out on the table now. And let's not be afraid to let them all fall where they may. There's no need to make saints of Gov. Blanco or Mayor Nagin. In such a storm of error as this, it would not surprise me if they made a number of them too. But the reason you have a federal government and particularly a FEMA in cases like this is that it is in the nature of local and state authorities to be at least partly overwhelmed in disasters of this magnitude.

Here's an open letter to the president from the New Orleans Times-Picayune. I've emphasized a few paragraphs about which I became particularly angry after reading.

Dear Mr. President:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a "Today" show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: "Buses! And gas!" Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, "We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day."

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, "You’re doing a heck of a job."

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

As Dan Kennedy writes yesterday about the man chosen by President George W. Bush to head the vital Federal Emergency Management Agency:

Michael Brown didn't just work for the International Arabian Horse Association before becoming the hopelessly unqualified head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He was asked to resign by the horse group, Brett Arends reports in today's Boston Herald.

In a comment to my last post, KarenT tries to shift the blame for the tragic response to Hurricane Katrina to local and state officials.

So, let's take a closer look at this issue.

For the sake of this argument, I'll grant that local and state officials could have done more to evacuate New Orleans. Heck, for the sake of this argument, one can even grant that local officals have done nothing right.

In right-wing world, this gives the president another pass. The blame is shifted. The myth of George W. Bush's leadership remains intact.

In the reality-based world, however, this just adds to the damning evidence against the president.

Why? Let me take the rare opportunity to quote former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, who cut right to the core of the president's problem with this observation a few days ago:

Gingrich said the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina "puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"

The Bush Administration may try to shift the blame to local officials all they want. But the fact of the matter is that in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, the federal government is going to have to deal with local and state officials. Probably less experienced local and state officials. Perhaps incompetent local and state officials.

And it appears that the Bush Administration has done nothing to make that work in the four years since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

The Bush Administration has set the homeland security agenda for the past four years. They have decided how to spend the money. They have determined the priorities. And now we see that we are not prepared.

For this, we should blame New Orleans? I think not.

We've learned, again, that the only thing at which the Bush Administration appears to be practiced is how to blame other people for its failures. We've also learned, again, that while we can count on the Bush Administration to use September 11 for political gain, we cannot count on them to actually do the hard work of protecting our homeland.

Now let's pass another big tax cut for the rich so we can all be nice and distracted from this awful conclusion.

Here's what then Governor George W. Bush had to say when kicking off his campaign for the presidency on June 12, 1999:

The first [goal of his candidacy], he said, "is to usher in the responsibility era, an era that stands in stark contrast to the last few decades, when the culture has clearly said, `If it feels good, do it. If you've got a problem, blame someone else.'

Thousands Remain To Be Evacuated
White House Shifts Blame to Local Officials

That's quite a personal responsibility era President George W. Bush has overseen.

Via Americablog, quoting a press release issued today by U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu (D-La.):

"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." (emphasis added)

Just what does Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist want the Senate to do next week while people continue to die in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina?

If you guessed, "pass a huge tax cut for the rich," then congratulate yourself for having a solid knowledge of the radical Republican playbook.

From ThinkProgress:

While President Bush has maintained that nobody could have “anticipated the breach of the levees,” more and more information is being revealed to demonstrate that the adminstration was fully aware of the catastrophic damage that could result if a hurricane were to strike the New Orleans region.

In July 2004, just over one year ago, FEMA held a five-day exercise at the State Emergency Operations Center in Baton Rouge to develop joint response plans for a catastrophic hurricane in Louisiana.

In the staged scenario developed by FEMA, a fictitious “Hurricane Pam” brought 120-mph winds and storms that “topped levees in the New Orleans area.” “More than one million residents evacuated and Hurricane Pam destroyed 500,000-600,000 buildings.”

Mr. President, do you have any plans to have an accountability moment with the people in your government responsible for this? The Associated Press' Sharon Theimer writes:

Several states ready and willing to send National Guard troops to the rescue in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans didn't get the go-ahead until days after the storm struck — a delay nearly certain to be investigated by Congress.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard on Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.

I'd love to hear someone in authority explain this outrage. An action taken, it is important to note, while several thousand people remain in the Superdome. The Associated Press' Mary Foster reports:

At one point Friday, the evacuation was interrupted briefly when school buses pulled 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 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.

The 700 had been trapped in the hotel, near the Superdome, but conditions were considerably cleaner, even without running water, than the unsanitary crush inside the dome. The Hyatt was severely damaged by the storm. Every pane of glass on the riverside wall was blown out.

Even the Washington Times' editorial board wonders:

Troops are finally moving into New Orleans in realistic numbers, and it's past time. What took the government so long?

Kevin Drum asks an excellent question: "Could the people in charge of managing the catastrophe in New Orleans possibly be more clueless?"

Just what, exactly, as the Bush Administration done with the last four years since the September 11 terrorist attacks?

As this astute e-mailer to Josh Marshall points out, any serious terrorist attack would result in a refugee crisis. Serious Homeland Security planning would account for this.

So, how in the hell do we explain the chaos in the Gulf states in Katrina's aftermath?

At a time when the Bush Administration is trying to push through another big tax cut, let's remember that this president and our raical Republican controlled Congress cut funding for levee repair and hurricane preparation in the New Orleans area.

Budgets, remember, are not just numbers. They are a reflection of priorities. Josh Marshall points to this Chicago Tribune story:

Despite continuous warnings that a catastrophic hurricane could hit New Orleans, the Bush administration and Congress in recent years have repeatedly denied full funding for hurricane preparation and flood control.

That has delayed construction of levees around the city and stymied an ambitious project to improve drainage in New Orleans' neighborhoods.

For instance, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for this fiscal year to pay for hurricane-protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain. The Bush administration countered with $3.9 million, and Congress eventually provided $5.7 million, according to figures provided by the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.).

And further down in the piece there's this ...

"I'm not saying it wouldn't still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have," said Michael Parker, a former Republican Mississippi congressman who headed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from October 2001 until March 2002, when he was ousted after publicly criticizing a Bush administration proposal to cut the corps' budget.

And one final point.

We're hearing again and again now that there just wasn't enough money for a lot of this stuff. Terrorism was our big focus. Some kinds of preparedness aren't simply a question of funds. They turn on less elastic resources. But most of what we're hearing about is dollars and planning. So when we hear, 'well, there just wasn't enough for this and terrorism', or 'we needed the money for Iraq', the real answer is 'nice try'.

The president cut taxes every year of his first term in office. He's trying to push through a major tax cut right now. So it's not terrorism that took away the money. It was tax cuts. And to a degree, same thing for Iraq.

Choices have consequences. And bad consequences require accountability.