The Dish

Mark Blumenthal is invaluable as always. 58 percent now disapprove of Bush’s handling of Katrina, up from 12 percent in the early days. 80 percent say the feds were too slow. More blame the feds than the locals (but they rightly don’t spare them either). Money quote:

Where the President has taken a serious hit on the CBS poll (though not necessarily just in the last week) is in perceptions of him as a strong leader and crisis manager. Right now, roughly half of Americans (48%) agree that Bush “has strong qualities of leadership,” down from 64% a year ago. Right now only 32% express “a lot” of confidence in George W. Bush’s ability to handle a crisis (19% express “some” confidence). In the weeks after 9/11, 66% had a lot of confidence in Bush, 24% some. Note that these were the second and third questions on the CBS survey, asked before any mention of Hurricane Katrina.

But Bush’s support among Republicans remains high and his generic approval rating hasn’t budged much. The country is polarized, and Republicans so wedded to the president, that he may never go below 40 percent approval, regardless of what he does or does not do. I’d love to know how Independents have shifted, if at all. More here.

Florida’s Sun-Sentinel was on Michael Brown’s case a year ago. Money quote:

[N]othing can restore FEMA’s full functionality so long as the agency’s incompetent director, Michael Brown, remains at the helm. Brown, a patronage appointee with no previous disaster management experience, embarrassed himself last year with his attempts to justify FEMA’s waste of more than $31 million in hurricane relief given to areas not affected by a hurricane. After a South Florida Sun-Sentinel investigation exposed the waste, the newspaper called for Brown to be fired. It now repeats that call.

Will Bush listen? Nah.

A disturbing article on South African president Thabo Mbeki’s and his ANC’s involvement in a phony HIV medication. The farce continues.

The Los Angeles Times makes an important point about the historic fact of a state legislature passing marriage rights for gay couples:

[O]nce the highest court does order the state to stop discriminating, it will be harder for critics to complain about activist judges getting ahead of the political process. In this case, judges will be reaffirming the Legislature’s intent.

And the social right will then say … what? They’ll blame “legislative activism”? As to what gay couples, their friends, families and supporters should do … use this as another opportunity to make the case for responsibility, equality, and family for everyone. Polls in California show that an initiative backing marriage rights has a chance of winning. Support this organization. Talk to every non-gay person you know and explain why everyone deserves the chance to have a family protected by law. Make the case. Now more than ever.

Don’t miss Paul Campos’ review of Michael Brown’s career at TNR. Money quote:

When Brown left the IAHA four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer – a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn’t attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA, he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA.

In normal times, appointing this kind of unqualified political hack to an agency with direct responsibility for saving lives is reckless. After 9/11, it is an incomprehensible failure.

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).