Category: Old Dish

Mark Shea, sinister Ratzingerian, tries to parse Bush’s words of praise for Michael Brown.

Josh Marshall adds another.

See if you can tell the difference. My favorite:

Throughout the Gulf Coast, Caucasian suburbanites attempting to gather food and drink in the shattered wreckage of shopping districts have reported seeing African-Americans “looting snacks and beer from damaged businesses.” “I was in the abandoned Wal-Mart gathering an air mattress so I could float out the potato chips, beef jerky, and Budweiser I’d managed to find,” said white survivor Lars Wrightson, who had carefully selected foodstuffs whose salt and alcohol content provide protection against contamination. “Then I look up, and I see a whole family of [African-Americans] going straight for the booze. Hell, you could see they had already looted a fortune in diapers.”

Take it away, Sean Hannity.

The Bull Moose calls it like it is.

A helpful and damning chronology of Katrina and local and federal responses. All the facts in it have links. I haven’t had time to examine every single detail, and the website is a left-wing one, but it looks accurate to me. Update: Here’s another time-line, compiled by a right-wing website. I link. You decide.

Rick Santorum adds his two cents: “I mean, you have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.” I’m not making this up. Maybe for all the dead people, their grieving families can pay a fine or something. You can watch him blame the victims here.

Louisiana’s Homeland Security department won’t let them into New Orleans. Of course, the Bush team wouldn’t let them into parts of Abu Ghraib as well. A reminder: my criticism of the feds is not meant to imply that the local authorities performed well. They performed pretty badly, especially in not ordering mandatory evacuations earlier. But from August 27 on, the president had full authority to act. He failed. Thousands of Americans are dead – under horrible conditions – as a result. That would be a national disaster before 9/11. After 9/11, it’s criminal negligence.

The details are almost indescribable:

“Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies. “Don’t step in that blood – it’s contaminated,” he said. “That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he’s an old man.”
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.
“That’s a kid,” he said. “There’s another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut.”
He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
“There’s an old woman,” he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. “I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death,” he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

Note that these people were not killed by the force of a hurricane, but by the lack of response to it. (Hat tip: Jeff.)

An alert emailer writes the following:

“Plain and simple: President Bush signed Gov. Blanco’s request to declare a state of emergency in Louisiana on 8/27. Within the text of that declaration the Gov. declares:

Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster.

The Stafford Act is the legal stipulator in that declaration. Under The Stafford Act:

§ 5170a. GENERAL FEDERAL ASSISTANCE {Sec. 402}

In any major disaster, the President may–

# direct any Federal agency, with or without reimbursement, to utilize its authorities and the resources granted to it under Federal law (including personnel, equipment, supplies, facilities, and managerial, technical, and advisory services) in support of State and local assistance efforts.

When President Bush signed that declaration on 8/27 he accepted a responsibility to the citizens of Louisiana. Who has the greater resources, Gov. Blanco, or President Bush? Why is Gov. Blanco held to a higher standard of competence than President Bush, when they each had the same responsibility?”

The only problem here is the formulation: “accepting responsibility.” This is something this president has a great deal of trouble doing.

The president is still out of it. I must say that the Katrina response does help me better understand the situation in Iraq. The best bet is that the president doesn’t actually know what’s happening there, is cocooned from reality, has no one in his high-level staff able to tell him what’s actually happening, and has created a culture of denial and loyalty that makes fixing mistakes or holding people accountable all but impossible.