Author: Andrew Sullivan

Mark Blumenthal helps you make sense of it all. Bottom line:

The trend in the President’s job rating on responding to Katrina has been a steady decline over the last week, a story not told by any other poll. Most important (at least to MP) is that interviewers conducted last night tend to confirm the drop in Bush’s rating seen in the polls done in the heart of the weekend.

We’ll see. Asking people if the president should be “blamed” for a hurricane is not a good question. Asking them if they disapprove of his response makes more sense. Last Wednesday, 39 percent disapproved. By Monday, 55 percent did. How that squares with this poll I don’t know.

More and more voices add to the chorus. There’s a Fire Michael Brown website and an online petition. More blog voices include Greg Djerejian, and calls for Brown’s accountability here, here, here, here, here, and here.

“Doubtless certain of my readers will again leap to the tired claim that I “hate Bush”. Sorry, but a quick read of my blog will not support that conversation-killing thesis. I don’t hate Bush. I simply wish to hold him responsible to do his job. Do I deny that there is an entitlement mentality? Of course not. But it is not an expression of entitlement mentality to expect the state to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. It is not an entitlement mentality to expect to be safe from rape in emergency facilitiies provided by the state. It’s not an entitlement mentality to think you shouldn’t have to watch your baby die of hydration because the Feds couldn’t figure out how to airlift water to helpless thirsty people for five frickin’ days and, in their world-historical and criminal incompetence, actually turned offers of water away.
The Rush Limbaughs of the world will have ample opportunity to blame poor people for foolishly expecting the state to do what the Founders thought it should do: ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense… Bush does have a spin machine. And it’s already swinging into high gear to sayi loudly, “Don’t look at Bush! Look! Incompetent state and local guys! Look! Stupid poor people! Look! Thugs!”
So long as Bush remains the King of Massive Government Spending Coupled with the Promise of “Homeland Security”, guys like Limbaugh are going to have a colossally difficult time shifting the blame for this debacle away from Bush. That’s not “Bush hatred”. That’s cold logic.” – theocon Mark Shea, getting the issue right.

“Katrina is a consequence of the destruction of [Gaza’s] Gush Katif [slate of Jewish communities] with America’s urging and encouragement. The U.S. should have discouraged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from implementing the Gaza evacuation rather than pushing for it and pressuring Israel into concessions.” – Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lewin, executive director of the Rabbinic Congress for Peace, in the crack-pot, far right magazine, WorldNetDaily.

“There is much to be said and done about the manmade annihilation of New Orleans, caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years.” – Michael Moore. Memo to Moore: Katrina was Category Four hurricane that almost made a direct hit. Once again, the far left does its best to shore up the president; and change the subject from his incompetence to their unhinged extremism.

Even the Washington Times states the obvious, dismissing the “locals are to blame” spin. When Bush has lost the Washington Times, he really only has Fox News (minus Shep Smith) and Hugh Hewitt to fall back on. The Miami Herald calls for Brown to go here.

FEMA bans photo crews from recording the dead bodies in the streets of New Orleans. (Hat tip: Hart’s Big Picture.)

For rescuing fellow human beings. Incomprehensible.

Okay, now this is insane:

As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters – his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week – a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

But wait: there’s more:

“But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.”

This is from the Salt Lake Tribune, not Daily Kos. Words fail me.

We all knew that the president picks his aides from among his friends, but this is as ridiculous as it is criminally negligent:

Before joining FEMA in 2001, Brown, a protege of longtime Bush aide Joseph Allbaugh, was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association and had virtually no experience in disaster management.
An official biography of Brown’s top aide, acting deputy director Patrick Rhode, doesn’t list disaster relief experience.
The department’s No. 3 official, acting deputy chief of staff Brooks Altshuler, also does not have emergency management experience, according to FEMA spokeswoman Natalie Rule.
Rule said the absence of direct experience managing emergencies is irrelevant because top managers need “the ability to keep the organization running.”
But Eric Holdeman, director of the King County Office of Emergency Management in Seattle, said familiarity with the specifics of disaster management is essential.
“Experience is not just general managerial experience, it’s experience in the field,” he said.

Government by and for the fundraisers and cronies (and their college room-mates). In wartime. Unforgivable.