Needlenose brought to my attention President Bush's statement an hour or so ago during his joint press conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani that "I take responsibility" for the failures in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.
Bush has been harping on the issue of "accountability" since the 2000 campaign. We need to hold our teachers accountable for the pathetic level of education of so many of our graduating high school students. We need to hold bureaucrats accountable for their wasteful expenditures. We need to hold the President accountable for getting a little extramarital nookie in the Oval Office. But we don't need to hold anyone accountable for lying about WMD's in Iraq, for failing to plan before the invasion of Iraq, for failing to plan after the invasion of Iraq, and for diverting resources from the hunt for Osama bin Laden — thereby allowing him to walk free four years after the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and Capitol Building attacks. [The Capitol appears to have been the intended target of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania.]
We also focus more on the "disrespect" of photographing corpses that have been left to rot in the open in New Orleans, than on the disrespect of leaving them there in the first place. We couldn't get food and water to New Orleans in a hurry, but yet we have already issued open-ended no-bid contracts to Bush cronies to rebuild Naval bases. When money was sought to upgrade the ability of first responders to communicate in a crisis, it was rejected by the Bush administration. When money was sought to reinforce the levees, it was rejected by the Bush administration. Yes, the Clinton administration also rejected some proposals, but the fact that your predecessor made an error does not excuse your continuation of that error.
President George Walker Bush is personally and directly responsible for a great many of the problems in the United States and in the world today. Whether he will do anything more than make empty declarations that he accepts that responsibility, remains to be seen. Of course, it also remains to be seen whether Dubya is really a robot from a little lavender planet on the far side of Alpha Centauri. I'd give the two possibilities roughly equal odds.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Dubya's version of "Accountability"
Open thread, anyone?
To commemorate last night's major milestone (the rolling of my blog's odometer into four whole digits!), I present you with an open thread.
What's up in Kiev, Zagreb, Utrecht, Hong Kong, Sydney, Wichita Falls, or Seattle, or wherever else you might be reading this fabulous blog?
(Utrecht, IJtrecht, we all trecht for Utrecht? Or should that be You crane, I crane, we all crane for Ukraine?)
Questions for John Roberts
Glenn Harlan Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee, and blogger of InstaPundit, has an opinion piece in Monday's New York Times, discussing some of the issues of judicial philosophy that are crucial to the discussion of confirming a new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Robert Bork, the lunatic ideologue whose presence on the Supreme Court we only narrowly dodged, describes the 9th Amendment as an "inkblot" with no substantive meaning. In case you don't have the entire Constitution memorized (or handily bookmarked, courtesy of Cornell University's Legal Information Institute), the 9th Amendment says simply, "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." The meaning is pretty simple: all rights and powers belong to the people except for those which they specifically give to the government, not the other way around. It is nothing less than the cornerstone of freedom in our nation.
The 9th Amendment is also the cornerstone of the "implied right of privacy" in Constitutional arguments ranging from abortion to the right of consenting adults to engage in private sexual conduct without interference from Busybody Big Brother.
Reynolds also poses the question of what limits apply to the government's power in a time of war. Does a declaration of war remove all constraints on executive power, as President Bush seems to believe (even though he hasn't bothered to ask for a declaration of war!)?
I would also like to mention the lead editorial from the September 6 edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, "Ten questions for John Roberts." All ten questions are apt, but I particularly appreciated #3, #5, and #9:
3. Do corporations have the same rights as individuals on matters such as free speech?In the law, a corporation is a "fictitious person." It acts as an independent entity from the individual human beings who control it. The entire purpose of this legal structure is to allow corporations to do things like borrow billions of dollars without leaving the managers and directors personally liable for those debts. However, corporations do not have the same natural interests as actual humans. Even if a corporation has children, the concept of family loyalty is considered more of a bad thing than a good thing. Should a corporation have unfettered freedom to influence the political process? If not, what are the limits?
5. What is your view on the scope of the Commerce Clause? [Article I, Section 8, paragraph 3]
9. What is your view of "originalism," the concept that the Constitution should be interpreted according to its meaning at the time of ratification?
The Commerce Clause permits Congress to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states." Does that enable the Congress to demand that individual states pass mandatory seat-belt laws? Does it enable the Congress to pass a nationwide speed limit, or a nationwide minimum drinking age? Personally, I think that's more than a bit of a stretch. If indeed we need national (rather than state by state) legislation on these matters, we should explicitly amend the Constitution to permit it, rather than making the dubious argument that the drinking age in Fresno somehow affects Kentucky.
The problem with "originalism" and "the original intent of the Framers of the Constitution" is that the original intent of the Framers was quite clear: the words of the Constitution should be the sole reference in interpreting its meaning. That is precisely why the Framers quite intentionally left painfully sparse record of their debates. Any person who holds to the doctrine of "originalism" is unfit to serve on the Supreme Court or any other court in the United States.
With all due humility, I would also like to bring up an entry I placed in this here blog back when we were talking about mere appellate judges: "My Challenge to Bush's Judicial Nominees."
[Note: the New York Times web site requires free registration to view articles.] Read More......
Senator Landrieu is part of the problem
Monday night's Daily Show highlighted comments that Senator Mary Landrieu (Democrat from Louisiana) made over in the last week regarding the blame for the inept, inadequate, and untimely response to Hurricane Katrina.
I intend to find out why the federal response, particularly the response of FEMA, was so incompetent and insulting to the people of our states. ... They gambled that no one would notice if Louisiana's critical and vital role in our national economy was threatened, and Washington rolled the dice, and Louisiana lost. — Sen. Mary Landrieu, on the floor of the United States Senate last weekIt is absolutely true that FEMA's response was incompetent and insulting to the people of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. However, that point gets lost, not highlighted, by trying to sweep under the rug the responsibility that state and local officials share for the failures in preparing for and responding to the hurricane.
Now is not the time for finger-pointing. ... [New Orleans] Mayor [Ray] Nagin and most mayors in this country have a hard time getting their people to work on a sunny day, much less getting them out of the city in front of a hurricane. — Sen. Mary Landrieu, on Fox News, 2005-09-11
Americans must hold President Bush accountable for putting an unqualified person in charge of FEMA, and for leaving him in place for far too long. However, Americans, and especially Louisianians and New Orlinians, must also hold people like Governor Blanco and Mayor Nagin accountable for the mistakes they made. The fact that FEMA was missing in action does not excuse the fact that the state and local governments also did too little, too late.
We've known for years that New Orleans would be submerged by a serious hurricane, and that the result would be that the city would be uninhabitable for months. Armed with that knowledge, the Congress should have given the Army Corps of Engineers the funding to improve the levees and repair the coastal wetlands. However, armed with that same knowledge, the city, the parish, and the state should have had emergency evacuation plans in place, ready to be put in motion. At the least, every person willing to evacuate should have had the means available to do so, and the fact that the means were scarce represents a failure at the local level.
It is FEMA's fault that thousands of people went for days without food and water at the Superdome and at the Convention Center. However, it is Mayor Nagin's fault and Governor Blanco's fault, and probably also the fault of whoever is in charge of Orleans Parish [equivalent to county government in most states], that there were so many people left with no other option.
The Democratic Party has much to gain by pressing for full accountability, but that principle must not be applied only to Republicans. For the sake of the American people, we must press for full accountability of all parties in this mess.
Why did it take FEMA so long to arrive in New Orleans? Why was FEMA so out of touch with the reality on the ground, even days after it arrived? Why did President Bush and Vice President Cheney continue on their vacations while thousands of people suffered needlessly? Why were dozens of school buses left to swim in the rising flood waters instead of being driven to safety, full of evacuees? Why did New Orleans not have an evacuation plan already in place for such an obvious potential calamity? Why did the State of Louisiana do so little to step into the breach left by the failures at the local and federal levels? ALL of these questions deserve answers, and soon. Read More......
A "Man of God" Preaching Hate and Division in New Orleans
Nightline also featured J. Nelson Brown, the pastor of the Greater Saint Mary Missionary Baptist Church. Unlike Michael Brown, Reverend Brown took immediate concrete steps to help those stranded by the hurricane — his church provided cold water, hot meals, and ice to the people left in a poor, predominantly African American neighborhood of New Orleans, beginning the day after the hurricane hit.
The reporter, Jake Tapper, said, "It is worth noting that Brown believes God sent Katrina to the Delta."
There are some people that are saying, Why Katrina came to New Orleans. The wickedness of New Orleans. Just last week, Labor Day weekend, the "decadence fest" [Pridefest, the annual Lesbian/Gay Pride celebration] would have been held in New Orleans. But when God say, Enough, you've gone far enough, you've overstepped your bounds, then God steps in. — the so-called "Reverend" J. Nelson Brown of New OrleansBack in the studio, Terry Moran, filling in for Ted Koppel in the anchor chair, closes off the segment saying, "one man of God, making a difference."
Just for starters, it is deeply offensive for a "man of God" to preach that God has sent Hurricane Katrina down to kill hundreds (possibly thousands) of people as punishment for the sin of allowing homosexuals to march in the streets. It is no less offensive than if the KKK were to declare that Katrina was God's punishment for mixed-race marriages. Nightline should be ashamed for failing to call out the bigotry more sharply: "it is worth noting" is hardly the condemnation such a statement demands.
[Mea culpa indeed. "Pridefest" (the gay pride parade) took place this year in New Orleans in mid-June. However, "Southern Decadence," a much more sexually oriented gay event, was scheduled for Wednesday, August 31 through Monday, September 5, corresponding quite closely to the time that Hurricane Corinna, um, I mean, Katrina struck the Big Easy and breached the levees. I maintain, all the same, that my analogy to the KKK holds, as most definitely does the paragraph below. As for accountability, I was wrong in "correcting" the chronology, and doubly wrong to claim it as a news "scoop," and I admit it freely.]
Make no mistake: I applaud J. Nelson Brown's efforts to feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, and give blessed ice to the overheated, most especially because the government (state and local, as well as federal) has been AWOL in providing relief, particularly in the Algiers neighborhood. However, I call upon all good Americans and all good Christians to condemn his attribution of this disaster to God's wrath upon homosexuals, just as we must all condemn Pat Robertson's call to assassinate the President of Venezuela, and just as all good Muslims must join with people of good will all over the world in condemning Osama bin Laden's twisted, hateful version of Islam.
[Incidentally, contrary to previous postings, in this blog entry,
FEMA staffer on Nightline
Leo Bosner, a 26-year veteran at FEMA, spoke on Monday's ABC News Nightline. He lays much of the blame for the mismanagement of the Hurricane Katrina relief effort at the feet of Michael Brown, whom he describes as "a great guy," but unqualified to run FEMA. The new acting director, R. David Paulison, does have actual emergency management experience, which is a promising sign. However, unless major changes are made, FEMA is going to lose many of its career staffers — their pride in their work was their main reward, since they aren't making the big bucks, and now that pride has been taken from them because the top job at FEMA has gone to Congressmen who lost their re-election bids and to college friends of college friends.
Even more importantly, Homeland Security is impeding FEMA's rescue efforts. DHS staffers call FEMA, insisting that emergency responders drop everything to fill in the numbers so that Secretary Michael Chertoff can tell his press conference exactly how many pounds of ice were delivered to such-and-such county.
I would hope that the administration would realize they need to take this seriously, make FEMA an independent agency, and put someone in charge who has an emergency background. If they can do that, I can be an optimist; if not, I'll take my retirement. — Leo Bosner, 2005-09-12, on ABC's NightlineThe debacle created by President Bush's rampant cronyism is only beginning. Removing Michael Brown from the picture was a necessary, but not sufficient, step in restoring FEMA to the competence and dedication to duty that were once its hallmarks. Read More......
Monday, September 12, 2005
U.S. Policy on Nuclear Weapons
The Washington Post discovered a draft of a U.S. military policy regarding the use of nuclear weapons, posted on a publicly accessible web site. Of course, the DoD has removed the document, but not before it was archived on other non-government sites, including the one linked above.
U.S. policy regarding first use of nuclear weapons is intentionally ambiguous to avoid giving the impression of having a list of circumstances in which we would not make a first nuclear strike. However, one specific scenario envisioned by the current draft document is the imminent threat of a strike using biological weapons where a nuclear blast is the only safe way to neutralize the biohazard. After all, if you toss a stick of dynamite into a container of aerosolized anthrax, you get the anthrax spread almost as effectively as if the terrorists did it themselves, but a nuclear blast hotter than the surface of the sun would toast the anthrax into a nice caramelized dessert topping.
The United States is debating resuming development of "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons, designed specifically to take out hardened subterranean targets, including a bunker drilled directly into the side of a mountain. Nuclear weapons are almost unimaginably powerful, but they also carry enormously damaging side effects, poisoning the landscape for generations to come. The fuel-air bomb (thermobaric explosive) carries an explosive punch exceeded only by nuclear weapons, and it can create an overpressure equal to a nuke. Any chemical or biological weapon within the blast area would be incinerated. The benefits of a bunker-buster nuke do not outweigh the costs of even being perceived as willing to contemplate using one.
Ooh, baby, give me that comma!
Bye, Bye, Brownie!
Mike Brown has resigned as director of FEMA, "to avoid further distraction from the ongoing mission of FEMA." In other words, "to let someone competent take over the job so that more people don't suffer unnecessary misery." Let's hope that David Paulison fits that bill, at least in the interim.
Today is a red-letter day: someone in the Bush administration actually accepted responsibility for his incompetent malfeasance! Will September 12th go down in history as a more important date than September 11th?
Bush highlighted the admittedly admirable fact that he signed declarations of emergency even before the hurricane hit the Gulf Coast. However, the fact that he saw ahead of time what an enormous potential for disaster serves only to highlight his lack of follow-through. If he signed these emergency declarations in advance, why did he and his entire administration take so abysmally little concrete action to mitigate the disaster? Why did it take so long for federal assistance to reach New Orleans, even with a significant head start?
Michael Brown has fallen on his sword, implicitly admitting that his incompetence and ineptitude cost the lives of hundreds (perhaps thousands) of American citizens. Now all we need to do is pass the sword up the chain of command to its incompetent, inept head. Brownie was a buffoon, but the responsibility for putting him in charge rests with the chimpanzee who appointed him.
I want to address one point of unwarranted criticism of the Bush administration and of President Bush personally. The charge has been laid by many, including musician Kannye West, that George W. Bush doesn't care about black people. Nothing could be farther from the truth! George W. Bush is not a racist. He does not care about the color of your skin. The truth is that George W. Bush doesn't care about poor people, and it is a mere accident of history that poor people are disproportionately black. George W. Bush has no less interest in helping poor black people than in helping poor white people or poor albino Puerto Ricans.
Of course, given that David Paulison, the interim FEMA director, is the very same man who recommended that every household keep plastic sheeting and duct tape in its emergency kit to protect against an anthrax attack, I can't say that I'm overly optimistic that FEMA is headed in the right direction. Vice Admiral Thad Allen, the new point person for Hurricane Katrina relief and a career Coast Guardian with over three decades of experience, is a rare ray of hope in a depressingly benighted landscape.
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Libération speaks about Katrina and Bush
PBS's The McLaughlin Group today featured a quote from the French newspaper Libération about the true colors of the Bush administration. After the 2004 election, Libération's headline was "L'Empire Empire," which is French for "The Empire Gets Worse." (The pun doesn't translate, but the sentiment does.)
This week, Libération said (by McLaughlin's translation):
On September 11, America found a common cause for pride in the bravery of its [people]. This time, there is no heroism and nothing left to see but the dark side of the empire — that of a country gnawed away by money and segregation, in which those shipwrecked in the system are left behind, abandoned to the elements.[Note: as was highlighted by another quote on today's program, the fact that Libération printed such a quote does not necessarily reflect the paper's editorial position. I was not able to find this quote in French or in English on Libération's web site.]
McLaughlin also quoted some other European newspapers:
Where was the President in his country's hour of need? And why has it taken him five days to go to New Orleans? — The Independent, LondonThe Europeans quite clearly perceive the horrific destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the astonishingly slow response (causing the suffering to be far greater than it might otherwise have been). President Bush dropped the ball by putting unqualified cronies in important positions. He dropped the ball again by slashing FEMA's funding. He dropped the ball again by responding slowly to the crisis, and he's dropped the ball yet again with his response to the criticism.
Third World America — The Daily Mail, London
The Tragic Cost of Bush's Iraq Obsession — The Financial Times, London; note that this particular headline was by a guest columnist
Incredibly Unprofessional — Deutsche Zeitung, Germany
For Bush, the poor do not exist! — Le Figaro, France
Was Katrina Colorblind? — Der Spiegel, Germany
Katrina: Ordeal for a Blind America — Le Temps, Switzerland
The weekend edition of Libération, by the way, carried the headline "Pompons les pétroliers. À la suite des profits records qu'ils ont engrangés, le ministre de l'Économie a menacé de les taxer. Résultat immédiat: Total et BP baissent le prix de l'essence." In plain English: "Let's pump the oil companies. Following the record profits they garnered, the Minister for the Economy threatened to tax them. Immediate result: Total and BP lowered the price of gasoline."
Gosh, us Americans don't know nothin' 'bout no oil companies makin' windfall profits from the sudden disruption in oil supplies. I reckon we'd better give them oil companies some more tax breaks so's they'll have some incentive to go out and drill fer oil. Yep. Read More......
Imaginary Risks
We have been hearing about how the glut of warnings — some of which prove to be uncanny for their foresight, while others are empty blathering — as if that somehow excuses the fact that all layers of government shirked their responsibility to take action to prevent or reduce the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina.
We knew that the levees were not designed to withstand a Category 4 or 5 hurricane, and we even knew they would not withstand a slow-moving Category 3. We also knew that it was an absolute certainty that such a hurricane would eventually hit New Orleans. Yet the city of New Orleans, Orleans Parish, the State of Louisiana, and the federal government all brushed aside those inconvenient reports.
Meanwhile, the media's response has been to say, as in Michael Kinsley's fatuous self-serving op-ed piece in today's Washington Post [see below], we had so many warnings about all these various dangers, how were we supposed to know?
The answer is that the media needs to ask tough questions — as it is finally remembering how to do in the aftermath of Katrina — and make an honest effort to objectively evaluate the claims of various factions.
We have some people telling us that frequent use of a cellphone might cause [warning: overuse of the BLINK tag in HTML may cause seizures], and that risk is presented on an equal footing with the counter-claim that there is absolutely no evidence of even a correlation (much less causation) between cellphone use and cancer.
Here are a few things I can tell you with absolute scientific certainty about cellphone use:
- the radiation from a cellphone cannot cause cancer
- the risk of any other harm from cellphone radiation is tiny
- little foil stickers do nothing to reduce the risk
- if you're really concerned, just get a hands-free kit — it will reduce the risk a million-fold
I can tell you with absolute political certainty that critical thinking on the part of the people, and most especially on the part of the press, is essential to democracy. Not all risks are equal, so we need to appraise the risks in order to set sensible priorities. Read More......
I Pledge a Grievance to the Flag
I was given an interesting poster at Burning Man the other day:
I pledge a grievance to the flag of the Plighted Stakes of America, and to the republics upon which it stands, one nation, playing God, blind and visible, with the illusion of Liberty and Justice for all. — Jupiter Jones[If you want a copy, contact passionpeace @t hotmail d0t com, or send $10 money order to P O Box 620892, Woodside CA 94062-0892.]
The United States flag is a symbol of liberty and justice. However, just as the Confederate battle flag represents both southern pride and the racist legacy of slavery, so, too, the stars and stripes have also come to represent American imperialism and in general a "fuck you" attitude towards the entire world.
The solution is for the nation to recommit itself to the principles for which the flag is meant to stand. Read More......
Hindsight: A User's Guide
Today's Washington Post carries an editorial from the opinion editor of the Los Angeles Times, Michael Kinsley, in which he says, "There is no foresight. We fight the last war because hindsight is all we have."
If so, that in itself is a remarkable indictment of our nation, our politicians, and our entire society. It is, in particular, an abdication of the responsibility of our news media.
Anyone who has watched the National Geographic Channel in the last decade knew that New Orleans was in danger of being submerged by a medium-to-large hurricane. It was no great secret. It was not hidden in some arcane technical journal. The Army Corps of Engineers has been warning Congress about it for years. As Kinsley acknowledges, in August 2001, the federal government reported that a devastating flood of New Orleans was one of our top three potential national disasters. And yet the ACOE's proposal to spend $2.5 billion to strengthen the levees was rejected, because it was not "cost-effective." This wasn't a "dusty Corps of Engineers report in a filing cabinet somewhere" [Kinsley's phrase], it was a prominent report loudly trumpeted from the ramparts — and yet it was still ignored.
We knew that a catastrophic flood was likely, we knew that it would cost tens, possibly hundreds, of billions of dollars to recover from, and yet $2.5 billion to prevent it was "not cost-effective"? It is certainly true that the Clinton administration — and the Clinton-era Republican Congress — share blame for underfunding prevention efforts, and Louisiana politicians share blame for directing federal money to politically motivated projects, but if the Bush administration had reacted responsibly and in a timely manner to the August 2001 report, New Orleans would be returning to normal today instead of anticipating months of clean-up and years of rebuilding. The record is clear and unmistakable.
Yes, that's in hindsight, but it's hindsight not of foresight lacking, but of foresight ignored.
Our political leaders are supposed to have vision, including foresight. They are also supposed to listen to the wise counsel of experts. They are supposed to dig until they find solid truth upon which they can rely in making their decisions.
Was appointing political cronies to the top three positions at FEMA an example of vision or foresight? Was it listening to the wise counsel of experts? How about slashing the budget for FEMA the year after we had four hurricanes in six weeks in a single state? How does that stand up for wisdom or foresight?
Indeed, our current government not only ignores foresight, it all too often brushes aside hindsight. Was it a good idea to invade Iraq on false pretenses, with inadequate force to restore order? Oh, we mustn't play the "blame game." Freedom is on the march.
Also, the news media are supposed to take the overwhelming glut of warnings, both from inside and outside the government, and filter them through a critical appraisal. We had a warning that New Orleans was in danger of flooding. Was that warning on target? Was ignoring that warning a wise policy decision? Was deepening the Port of Iberia, Louisiana, a more important project than strengthening the levees? Then why was it funded? These are the questions that the Fourth Estate is supposed to ask, but the media has become more of a lap dog than a trusty news hound.
I can give you another, more 9/11-related example. I flew to Texas for my recent trip to Crawford. Because I purchased my ticket less than a week before my departure, I was "randomly" selected for extra security measures. As I approached the TSA employee, I said, "I've been randomly selected for having bought my ticket less than a week in advance." (It's no great secret, either: my ticketing confirmation warned me that, due to the last-minute nature of my travel, I should allow extra time for security procedures.) The screener's response: "Yeah, we really should refine that one." Any security measure that is that obvious to everyone, serves no useful purpose. The same goes for automatically picking everyone with a one-way ticket. Suppose just for a moment that you're a terrorist, bent on sacrificing your own life for the glory of your cause. Is there any real point in making you plan more than a week in advance and buy a round-trip ticket, as a means of throwing a monkey wrench into your plans? Do you really think that Mohammed Atta just woke up on a Tuesday morning and decided, yeah, I think today's a good day to die?
The problem with our society is not that we have no foresight, but that we have too few willing to make a critical evaluation of the deluge of conflicting foresight. We dismiss as pork-barrel a request for major funding to prevent a flood, without considering that it might actually be money well spent.
[Thanks to Bill for calling this article to my attention. Also please note that the Washington Post requires free registration to read articles on its site.]
Saturday, September 10, 2005
Bill Maher, live and in person
Bill Maher, host of HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, made an in-person appearance this afternoon at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco. He did a brief Q&A with the people waiting for autographs, and then got down to the business of signing books. I gave him my "Bush's Chicken" cup as a souvenir.
Bill Maher is one of a handful of people who give me hope for the survival of America and American democracy.
Friday, September 09, 2005
Brownie quietly shuffles back to Washington
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was just on C-SPAN at a press conference announcing that FEMA director Michael Brown has been relieved of duty overseeing the relief effort for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and nearby areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Chertoff brushed aside a direct question as to whether this move was a prelude to Brown's resignation, but it's a question that won't go away so easily.
Michael Brown's management of the Katrina crisis has been woefully inadequate and hopelessly incompetent — an obvious and foreseeable result of the Bush administration's policy of filling crucial posts with political cronies who lack all relevant knowledge and experience. Not only Michael Brown, but also the #2 and #3 posts at FEMA, must be fired immediately, since they didn't have a single day of emergency management experience among them before this crisis. Running FEMA is not a task for which on-the-job training is appropriate. Lives are at stake, as is the economic survival of the entire region. This is not a time for faith-based direction, but rather direction based on experience and solid planning. I sincerely hope that Vice Admiral Thad Allen (Coast Guard) and Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré (Army) are better equipped than Brownie and his cadre of clowns.
George Bush's eulogy for William Rehnquist
Here is what George W. Bush had to say about the impact that William Rehnquist had on our nation in his 33 years of service on the Supreme Court of the United States:
William H. Rehnquist was born and raised in Wisconsin. He was the grandson of Swedish immigrants. Like so many of his generation, he served in the Army during World War II. He went on to college with the help of the G.I. Bill. — President George W. Bush, as replayed on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart 2005-09-08To be fair, Dubya did get someone to ghost-write a somewhat more in-depth eulogy for the memorial service, although it was still fluff like "We remember the integrity and the sense of duty that he brought to every task before him." Read More......
Ted Koppel on Preparing for Disaster
Ted Koppel on ABC News Nightline 2005-08-30:
We don't like anticipating disasters. It suggests pessimism and America is largely a nation of optimists.As of two days after the hurricane struck, the Bush administration was still maintaining that it could never happen.
But when you look at the damage inflicted by an accidental storm, you have to think about the sheer havoc that an intentional terrorist attack may produce one of these days.
We want to believe that no one will ever use a weapon of mass destruction against one of our cities. But it's almost inevitable that someone will. We don't like to hear that; we certainly don't want to contemplate the consequences. But we need to talk about it and we need to plan for it.
The very worst thing you can do when confronting a potential disaster is to take the position that it'll never happen to us.
This isn't a matter of "the blame game"; it is a matter of critical urgency that we remove Michael Brown and other incompetent Bush cronies before they can do any further damage to the recovery effort. Read More......
NOAA Weather Alert on Katrina
The full text of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) alert issued at 10:11 a.m. (Central Daylight Time; = 15:11 UTC) on 2005-08-28 is available on the web. This is not some wacko conspiracy theory; the authenticity of this alert was verified by Brian Williams of NBC News on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on 2005-09-08.
Here are some selected quotes:
...Devastating damage expected...And yet President Bush, FEMA chief Michael Brown, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice have all claimed that they had no way of knowing the hurricane would be devastating to New Orleans.
Hurricane Katrina, a most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength, rivaling the intensity of Hurricane Camille of 1969.
Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer. At least one half of well-constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail, leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed.
The majority of industrial buildings will become non-functional. ... Airborne debris will be widespread, and may include heavy items such as household appliances and even light vehicles. ... Persons, pets and livestock exposed to the winds will face certain death if struck. ... Power outages will last for weeks ... Water shortages will make human suffering incredible by modern standards. ... Only the heartiest [trees] will remain standing, but be totally defoliated.— excerpts from NOAA alert issued at 2005-08-28 15:11 UTC
We had no way of knowing that Saddam didn't really have WMD's. We had no way of knowing that Saddam didn't really have WMD programs. We had no way of knowing that the people of Iraq would view us as occupiers, rather than greeting us as liberators. We had no way of knowing that some Iraqis would resist the occupation by force of arms. We had no way of knowing that thousands of extremists would flock to Iraq to help the resistance. We had no way of knowing that the war in Iraq would increase, rather than decrease, the risk of terrorist attacks in the United States and our allies. We had no way of knowing that a Category 5 hurricane would breach the levees in New Orleans. We have no way of knowing whether or not evolution is the best scientific explanation of the origin of species.
But we should have absolute faith in the man that President Bush wants to install as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, without asking pesky questions about things like his view of the Constitution and its role in society. Read More......
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
Katrina and New Orleans
Almost immediately after returning from Crawford, I headed off to Burning Man, so I haven't had time to say much about Hurricane Katrina and the City Formerly Known as New Orleans. I grew up on the Gulf Coast, and I've seen hurricanes. I sat through a direct hit from a Category 2 hurricane in the Caribbean a couple of years ago. Even a mere "tropical storm" is not to be taken lightly, and Katrina was a hurricane of epic scale.
Hurricane Katrina has exposed the incompetence and callousness of the Bush administration with unprecedented clarity. Anyone who has watched television in the last five or ten years knew that New Orleans was in danger of catastrophic flooding if a major hurricane broke the levees that keep the Mississippi River, Lake Pontchartrain, and ultimately the Gulf of Mexico from reclaiming the city. The Army Corps of Engineers sought $2.5 billion to reinforce the levees, but the Bush administration insisted on slashing the ACOE's budget instead, because they needed the money for the war in Iraq and for tax cuts for the wealthy. One after another plea for funding to prevent this disaster was rebuffed. Building levees and sea gates and other mechanisms to prevent or at least control flooding is not the province of individual citizens or private enterprise. On this scale, I believe it is not even the province of local or state government, but rather of the United States government. Bush is willing to spend piles of government money to protect golf courses in Wyoming from non-existent terrorist threats, but not to protect an entire city from a well-known, entirely foreseeable natural threat. We are the righteous servants of God, so He will protect us from hurricanes, earthquakes, and plagues of locusts.
Congress has already allocated $10.5 billion in emergency aid for the Gulf Coast region, and more will be needed. The city of New Orleans will take months just to clean up before it can even think about rebuilding. The Port of New Orleans will be unusable for the foreseeable future, and economic devastation will ripple outwards, ultimately affecting every corner of the country. $3 gasoline is only the beginning. Certainly there would have been considerable destruction even if the New Orleans levees had held, but how can Bush justify refusing the money to bolster them?
Now Bush wants to keep all news media out of New Orleans, so that you won't see the piles of rotting corpses, especially the people who died after the hurricane passed through, waiting for relief that came too little, too late.
What should Bush have done? As Katrina was approaching New Orleans, he should have had Homeland Security mobilize a fleet of buses to carry evacuees out of the danger zone. About 20% of the population of New Orleans stayed behind simply because they had no way to get out, and the federal government hardly lifted a finger to help them. After the storm itself passed, Bush should have had FEMA on the ground within hours, with emergency food and water and medical care. Bush should have immediately federalized the national guards from nearby states such as Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, even before the hurricane hit, to help with evacuation, relief, and security.
Instead, Bush sat on his duff doing nothing, saying that no one could have predicted that which was repeatedly and loudly predicted.
The people of New Orleans have George Walker Bush to blame for their plight. It's time to make him pay for his blunders, for once in his life.
Thursday, September 01, 2005
Blame the Victim
Gwen Araujo was a transgendered teenager. She went out with some boys, and they wound up getting quite intimate, which was all fine and well until the boys found out that Gwen was born biologically male. According to testimony in the first trial and then in the re-trial, the boys beat her up, then tied her up, and then strangled her to death.
One of the defense attorneys argued in his closing statement that Gwen had "provoked" her own murder by deceiving these poor innocent boys into thinking that she was a "real" girl. (She was a real girl, just with some mismatched body parts.)
Solely for the sake of argument, let's pretend that Gwen wasn't a real girl, and that it was her fault that she deceived her sexual partners in that regard. Does that deceit in any way mitigate the crime of killing her? When the TV news talking head tells me that they'll be right back with an important story after these exciting messages from our sponsors, and they come back to tell me about the nice firemen rescuing Mrs. Appelschmutzling's kitten from the neighbor's pomegranate tree, does that shameful deception mitigate my crime if I go down to the studio and go postal? Or is it only a deception that makes the killer feel like less of a muy macho hombre that can partially excuse the crime? The defense attorney also described the killing as a crime in "the heat of the moment," which sounds a bit odd, given that, according to testimony in the trial, the boys beat up Gwen, took her to the garage, then argued about whether or not to kill her, and then strangled her. That's not a timeline that sounds much like "heat of the moment" to me.
It's so nice to know that we can still blame the victim in an American court of law.
[Read more about the Gwen Araujo murder re-trial at GwenAraujo.blogspot.com]
