Category: Old Dish

Katrina did get the Bush administration to do something swiftly: push through a recess DOJ appointment of someone involved in devising the detention policies in Gitmo. When these guys want to do something, they do.

Spent the morning at the doc’s and then taping the Chris Matthews’ Show. I’m trying to think of what this event means in the national psyche. The complete collapse of effective government and of emergency procedures four years after 9/11 mean only one thing. We do not have an administration capable of running the country during the war on terror. They have bungled homeland security; they have mismanaged Iraq; they have dropped the ball in New Orleans. In each case, a conservative government does not seem to understand that law and order are always, always, the first priority. The glib self-congratulation of government official after official made me retch listening to them. Chertoff mouthed bureaucratese. Only today did the president say that the response was “not acceptable.” Notice again the distancing: you, Mr Bush, are the man responsible. It is your performance that is not acceptable. Of course, we have to live with this president for three years – and one can only tremble at the thought of what that means in the event of another terror strike. I do think however that this crisis means an obvious shift in terms of Bush’s successor. Two words: Rudy Giuliani. We need someone to do for the federal government what Rudy did for New York’s. His social liberalism will now be far less of an obstacle. We need competence again.

Jonah Goldberg, perhaps the most fair-minded of conservatives at NRO, states the obvious:

So the question is, would the money have been better spent if the Republicans hadn’t gotten their way? And, though it sickens me to say so, that is at best an open question. I have the utmost faith in the kleptocratic and dysfunctional governments of New Orleans and Louisiana to waste and steal money. But, we were supposed to be preparing –at the national level — for a major terrorist attack for the last four years. I just don’t see much evidence of that preparation… For supporters of the war, this spectacle is going to be particularly hard to accomodate because it is in the interests of the political classes to keep their pork and it is in the interests of the antiwar left to frame this as a choice between Baghdad and New Orleans. That should not be the choice. The choice should be between the highway bill, ag subsidies and the like. The Don Young Highway should at least be renamed to the “Go Suck Eggs New Orleans Highway.”

I have no confidence in this administration to deal with the kind of calamities that 9/11 proved we may have to deal with. After four years, they are still incompetent, unprepared, unable to have made the real changes that we need to have made. In the case of New Orleans, criminally negligent. People have died because of their inability to plan, to spend wisely, to set real priorities, to respond quickly. That goes for New Orleans. And it also applies to Iraq.

My apologies for light blogging today. I was traveling back to D.C. and have spent the evening trying to catch up with all the developments in the Katrina catastrophe (and write a column). More tomorrow, but for now, I have to say this seems to me to be a new situation. This has morphed from a natural disaster into a social meltdown. The Lousiana governor seems overwhelmed (Barbour seems much more effective); New Orlean’s civic authorities seem non-existent (and bear responsibility for the insufficient preparation for this potential and widely predicted nightmare); and the president’s response has been decidedly weak. His call to restrain from using gas was, well, Carteresque. It seems to me inconceivable that we cannot impose basic law and order in a major American city five days after a hurricane has hit. This is a very basic governmental responsibility and all I can say is that I see no evidence of competence or effectiveness so far. FEMA had no solid evacuation plan? The feds had no plans to maintain order in such a situation? The explosion of complete lawlessness is beginning to make Haiti look like a pleasant place to live. This is America? Where order is so distant that snipers can prevent the evacuation of a hospital? The fundamental reason for my inability to support a second Bush term was his demonstrated incompetence in performing the basic functions of government. It seems to me that the people of New Orleans are now as much a victim of this as the people of Iraq. I guess we can merely be thankful that Rumsfeld hasn’t yet appeared to say “Stuff happens.” Yes, it does. When your government seems unable to do the most basic things required of it.

QUOTE OF THE DAY II: “I gotta tell you something, we got five or six hundred letters before the show actually went on the air, and no one – no one – is saying the government is doing a good job in handling one of the most atrocious and embarrassing and far-reaching and calamatous things that has come along in this country in my lifetime. I’m 62. I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things. I have never, ever, seen anything as bungled and as poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in the Superdome. What is going on? This is Thursday! This storm happened 5 days ago. This is a disgrace. And don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government that the taxpayers are paying for, and it’s fallen right flat on its face as far as I can see, in the way it’s handled this thing.” – Jack Cafferty, CNN, as reported on Kos. (And yes, I’m largely ignoring his cheap shot. I plead guilty to not fully getting the extent of the calamity in New Orleans when it first unfurled. But trying to use it to minimize 9/11 (which was pre-meditated murder, not a natural disaster) seemed to me inappropriate then and inappropriate now. And the notion that those of us who want to defeat Islamo-fascism are just wanting to “find an enemy” is as misguided now as it was then. We never wanted to find an enemy. They found us. And they’re still at large. We can have that 9/11 debate without relating it to Katrina. Can’t we?

“‘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.” – from the Chicago Tribune, noted by Josh Marshall.

“I think your conclusion that global warming has nothing to do with the destruction in the South is a bit premature. First, two admissions: You (and the Times) are right, science hasn’t shown a connection between hurricane frequency and climate change. Second, global warming is certainly not responsible for any individual hurricane.
However, there is evidence that hurricane intensity may well be linked to global warming. There’s an interesting piece in Nature by Kerry Emanuel that explores this link. While global climate change may not increase the number of hurricanes we experience, an increase in the severity and duration of hurricanes could be just as bad, if not worse.
The point is that our actions have environmental consequences that in turn affect our well being. Combine the preliminary research by Emanuel with the strong evidence that diminishing wetlands around New Orleans removes an important protective barrier, and I think there’s a strong case to be made that we may be making ourselves more vulnerable to severe weather events. This doesn’t mean we should start blaming the victim or saying that ‘we had it coming’, but it does warrant a closer look at how we can make better choices by accounting for all of the costs. Isn’t that essentially your SUV argument?” Here’s what NASA says about the potential effects of global warming:

Right now the IPCC reports that the amount of precipitation, especially in the mid-latitude to high-latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere, will likely increase. They believe, however, that it will come in the form of bigger, wetter storms, rather than in the form of more rainy days. So it’s more probable that the increase in rain will only serve to tax our drainage systems rather than benefit vegetation or replenish natural, underground aquifers. As to larger more destructive weather patterns, hurricanes will likely increase in intensity due to warmer ocean surface temperatures. And researchers speculate that El Niño events may increase in intensity for the same reason.

Here’s another source:

Although we cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricane will occur in the future with global warming, the hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions.

I already conceded that in the abstract, global warming might be related to hurricanes. But there’s no specific evidence to relate it to Katrina, worse hurricanes have landed before, and nothing that has just happened is somehow unprecedented in recent history. But the climatic future doesn’t look good for New Orleans in the coming century.

HOW TO SELL A CAR SOUND SYSTEM: Inter-species sex, of course!

GET OUT NOW: Juan Cole wants immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Here’s an interview with the leftist prof in Foreign Policy.

96 PERCENT CHIMP: They’ve done the chimpanzee genome – and we’re 96 percent the same DNA. If you’re one of the 70 percent of evangelical Christians who believe we were all made on one day 6,000 years ago, best not to read the link.

THE REALISTS STRIKE BACK: The conservative debate on Iraq intensifies. Gary Rosen reviews some realist critiques.

“VERY FIRST TERM”: One of Condi’s key aides takes a sideswipe at Rumsfeld in this piece.

Josh Marshall posts the entire Times-Picayune piece about Bush administration cuts to protecting New Orleans’ levees last year. Money quote:

“I guess people look around and think there’s a complete system in place, that we’re just out here trying to put icing on the cake,” said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the “Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity” levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers. “And we aren’t saying that the sky is falling, but people should know that this is a work in progress, and there’s more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place.”

I agree with a commenter on Josh’s site: “There’s of course no way to know whether this would have made any difference.” But it’s not a plus for the president right now.

“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city. From ‘Girls Gone Wild’ to ‘Southern Decadence’, New Orleans was a city that had its doors wide open to the public celebration of sin. May it never be the same. Let us pray for those ravaged by this disaster. However, we must not forget that the citizens of New Orleans tolerated and welcomed the wickedness in their city for so long,” – Michael Marcavage, in a statement from the evangelical Christian group, “Repent America,” issued today.

If what this article says is true, the Bush administration has a major political problem on its hands. Money quote:

On June 8, 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: “It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us.”

Also that June, with the 2004 hurricane season starting, the Corps’ project manager Al Naomi went before a local agency, the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and essentially begged for $2 million for urgent work that Washington was now unable to pay for. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

“The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don’t get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can’t stay ahead of the settlement,” he said. “The problem that we have isn’t that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can’t raise them.”

Yes, some would even blame Bush and the war for a hurricane. But blaming Bush and the war for the poor state of New Orleans’ levees is a legitimate argument. And it could be a crushing one.

“So while children are drowning and others are floating around, dead in the water, the wannabe Yale cowboy struts around the set of his faux town hall meetings, has a bit of cake with John McCain, and takes in some fresh air in Colorado.

Congress? Anyone?

Dick? Where is Dick? Anyone?

Condi? Rummy? Any other Iran-Contra Folks?

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

Hello?

So where does that leave us, the citizens of this raped, pillaged, terrorized, demoralized, freedom loving nation?

Floating face down, eyes affixed on a once great New Orleans!” – Larisa Alexandrovna, on HuffPuff. No, it apparently isn’t a Gutfeld parody. And there’s a lot more. Go read.