Category: Old Dish

Bob Novak rips into Michael Chertoff. Money quote:

The Democrats on the ground, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, have done little to commend themselves. But that does not excuse the federal performance, in the candid opinion of many Republicans. To start with, these Republicans talk about taking FEMA back from the Homeland Security Department. They agree that heads must roll, certainly Brown’s and possibly Chertoff’s.

I’m still predicting that Bush will fire no one.

You can’t keep making this up:

Five West Virginia Air National Guard C-130 transport aircraft sent to pick up displaced victims from Hurricane Katrina returned home empty early Wednesday, following a series of frustrating bureaucratic snafus. “We met with obstacles everywhere we turned,” said Lara Ramsburg, communications director for Gov. Joe Manchin. “It’s been a frustrating experience.” “To bring five planes back empty is a crying shame,” Manchin told The Associated Press… “Until we hear something from FEMA – until they can put a plan together where we’re sure the planes will be used – the planes will stay here,” Ramsburg said.

Fire Michael Brown.

Arnold vetoed: predictable, if truly depressing. He’s as good as it gets in today’s fundamentalist GOP, and he punted. I’m taking a huge amount of flak from the gay blogosphere for ever backing Arnold – and that’s what you get if you ever try and support a Republican in today’s context. Schwarzenegger’s argument is that Proposition 22 already settled the question. No, it didn’t. When Proposition 22 was passed, there were no marriage rights for gay couples in California: they were already banned. Prop 22 was not about legalizing marriage rights for gay couples in California. The point and origin of Prop 22 was to prevent marriages in other states being automatically recognized by California. In the official arguments for and against the Proposition, the proponents argued:

When people ask, “Why is this necessary?” I say that even though California law already says only a man and a woman may marry, it also recognizes marriages from other states. However, judges in some of those states want to define marriage differently than we do. If they succeed, California may have to recognize new kinds of marriages, even though most people believe marriage should be between a man and a woman.

In the same document, they even underlined this point in capital letters:

THE TRUTH IS, UNLESS WE PASS PROPOSITION 22, LEGAL LOOPHOLES COULD FORCE CALIFORNIA TO RECOGNIZE “SAME-SEX MARRIAGES” PERFORMED IN OTHER STATES. That’s why 30 other states and the federal government have passed laws to close these loopholes. California deserves the same choice.

The debate at the time centered entirely around that question. You can see that from the actual legal code that added Prop 22. Section 300 defines civil marriage. Section 308 defines recognition of out-of-state marriages. Proposition 22 was inserted at Section 308.5. The issue of whether California itself should pass a proposed equal marriage law was not on the ballot – and the ballot was five years ago. Arnold cannot get off the hook on this one. He took a stand against civil rights; and history will record that.

BE THAT AS IT MAY: The truth is: this moment transforms the civil marriage debate entirely. For the first time, unprompted by a court, a state legislature in America has passed a bill granting equality in marriage to gay couples. And this gets to the crux of the matter. The conservatives who have said they oppose equality in marriage for gay couples solely because of the way it was imposed no longer have that argument. That argument is over. Dead. Kaput. This was not “judicial activism”. It was not a court deciding for civil rights. This was an elected legislature in the biggest state of the union; just as in Massachusetts, it was and is an elected legislature, answerable to voters for their decisions. So two questions remain for conservatives. Do they prefer government by proposition or representative government? The Burkean argument has always been the latter. Today’s “conservatives” back whatever method appeases their fundamentalist base. The second question is whether conservatives believe that states should be able to make their own decisions on the question of civil marriage. The classic, principled argument has been: states’ rights, especially that of state legislatures. Today’s conservatives would remove that right from such legislatures and impose a uniform ban on any protections for gay couples across the entire country. Again, they have abandoned federalism to appease fundamentalism. Today’s Republican party wants to prevent legislators representing one tenth of the country’s citizens from governing themselves.

THE GOOD NEWS: With the “judicial tyranny” canard removed, we can now have the real debate. Are gay people equal citizens? Are their relationships worth as much as, say, Britney Spears’ 55-hour stunt in Las Vegas? Will including them in civil marriage destroy the institution, strengthen it or have no measurable impact? Is it better for society that gay people have incentives to look after each other, stay close to their families, build their own families, and become fully responsible citizens? Or should we continue to devalue their relationships, keep them on the edge of society, stigmatize and strip them of basic protections for their relationships? We may soon have ballot initiatives in Massachusetts and California that are designed to strip gay couples of all legal protections, including the civil unions and domestic partnerships that those states have enacted. Then we’ll see what’s truly behind this “pro-marriage” movement.

Watch this clip of a woman talking to a priest about what she went through. She says the National Guard just waved at them from helicopters. She doesn’t understand why more wasn’t done to save her and those with no resources to get out. I still don’t understand.

Soon, soon, through dykes of our content
The crumpling flood will force a rent
And, taller than a tree,
Hold sudden death before our eyes
Whose river dreams long hid the size
And vigours of the sea.

But when the waters make retreat
And through the black mud first the wheat
In shy green stalks appears,
When stranded monsters gasping lie,
And sounds of riveting terrify
Their whorled unsubtle ears,

May these delights we dread to lose,
This privacy, need no excuse,
But to that strength belong,
As through a child’s rash happy cries
The drowned parental voices rise
In unlamenting song…..

– from W.H. Auden’s “A Summer Night” (1933).

His blog is called “Right Wing Nut House,” just so you know where he’s coming from:

Thanks for linking my timeline.
Your analysis is correct. The timeline highlights what federal officials – and state and local leaders also – said they were doing in response to the disaster. Why there was a Grand-Canyon-like chasm between what they said and what actually arrived is for whatever blue ribbon Commission or Congressional inquiry to decide.
Unless one is willing to posit the notion that the feds were simply lying through their teeth and had no intention of assisting those desperate, hungry people stranded in New Orleans then one must assume that what they said they were going to do, they had every intention of doing. Hence, the nature of the timeline.
If one were to do a proper timeline of events, then it would have been appropriate to include the dog that didn’t bark items. Maybe one could even slip in Condi’s shopping spree or Bush’s guitar strumming photo-op. But that was not my intent.
And if I left the impression of absolving the President of any “blame” then let me make it a little clearer. Anyone who would hire as Director of FEMA a Michael Brown has made a ghastly, unconscionable mistake. Bush wouldn’t be the first President to make a mistake of such magnitude nor will he be the last. I suspect when all is said and done, the American people will make the appropriate judgement and the Republican party will suffer for their leader’s shortsightedness at the polls.

A fair assessment, I’d say.

Right-wing attack-machine Michelle Malkin goes after Michael Brown. I reiterate her contention that Nagin and Blanco deserve censure as well. Bush administration flak, Kathryn Jean-Lopez, predicts Brown will quit Friday morning. I predict he’ll be in his job for a long, long time. This is the Bush administration. Brownie did a “heck of a job.” So did Bremer, remember?

Money quote from the St Petersburg Times:

Just last year, FEMA hired a private company, IEM Inc. of Baton Rouge, to help conduct an eight-day drill for a fictional Category 5 hurricane in New Orleans named Pam. It included staging a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, a prediction of 15 feet of water in parts of the city and the evacuation of 1-million people.
But the second part of the company’s work – to design a plan to fix unresolved problems, such as evacuating sick and injured people and housing thousands of stranded residents – never occurred because the funding was cut.

Tragic.

Moran has compiled a time-line that does its utmost to be fair to the federal authorities. I linked to it earlier, but here it is again. Alas, much of what he says the feds were doing is largely reports of what they said they were doing, including numbers of troops being deployed and so forth (troops that in many cases simply didn’t show up). He also omits some of the worst Bush gaffes, and any account, as he concedes, of what wasn’t done. If you want to get the president off the hook and put all the blame on the locals, Moran’s time-line is your best bet. I still don’t think it does the trick. Neither, by the way, does Moran. His bottom line is that everyone is to blame, but he is curiously silent about the president. Here’s his conclusion:

If I may be allowed a personal opinion?

This has been a clusterfuck from the get go on all levels and with a few unbelievably heroic exceptions – mostly the LA Fish and Wildlife employees who were out in boats rescuing people almost before the storm passed and our selfless military who performed with their usual spectacular competence and courage. I am convinced that any Commission or Congressional investigation – if even slightly impartial – will find enough stupidity, incompetence, panic, blame shifting, lying, and bureaucratic ass covering to sate the appetite for name calling and blame assigning of even the most partisan among us.

This was a failure of leadership and competence. But it was also a failure of will. And for that, you need look no farther than the mirror in your bathroom, dearest readers. We elected this crew. We elected the Congresses over the past 25 years – Democratic and Republican – that failed to do the things necessary to make New Orleans safer.

Amen to that. I have no doubt that Blanco was far too dilatory and Nagin less than skilfull when it counted. They take their fair share of the responsibility. But you know what? Blanco and Nagin weren’t elected as commanders-in-chief. The fundamental reason George W. Bush was re-elected was his commitment to national security and a government able to deal with post-9/11 real crises and calamities. That was his promise. And when the first real post 9/11 test came, he flunked it.

FEMA is trying to censor the reality in New Orleans, under the guise of “respect” for the dead. Money quote:

[O]n Tuesday, FEMA refused to take reporters and photographers along on boats seeking victims in flooded areas, saying they would take up valuable space need in the recovery effort and asked them not to take pictures of the dead. In an e-mail explaining the decision, a FEMA spokeswoman wrote: “The recovery of victims is being treated with dignity and the utmost respect and we have requested that no photographs of the deceased by made by the media.”

The press should ignore those requests, get boats themselves and show the world what has actually happened. (Hey, much of the media was ahead of FEMA during the worst of it. Why not again now?) That goes for any intrepid bloggers with camera-phones or anyone else who can slip through the censorship net. If necessary, faces can be blurred to protect the dignity of the dead. But it matters that we see the full consequences of government delinquency. That’s what the press is for. Ignore FEMA. Photobloggers, here’s an opportunity for important and necessary work.