The Dish

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.

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.