It isn't what Bush did after the hurricane that is the real scandal, it is what he did before it.
George Bush's approval rating has sunk even lower in the midst of the Katrina crisis and a solid majority disapprove of his handling of the situation. While many pundits have bashed Bush for not leaving his vacation until several days after the disaster struck and for giving a campaign-style speech in San Diego (unrelated to the crisis) even after Governor Blanco had called a state of emergency in Louisiana, the real scandal in the midst of the crisis has largely been overlooked.
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26 - Nancy
So much blame to spread, so little time ... and hindsight is a wonderful, 20/20 thing.
Starting at the top, Smirk has forgotten (if he ever knew) that when one is President, one accepts final and ultimate responsibility, whether one is actually involved or not. Guess "the buck stops here" legend of Harry Truman never made it to Smirk's attention, huh? If Georgie wasn't/isn't prepared to accept such responsibility, he shouldn't have run for the office. However, being a (former?) alcoholic, Bush also displays all the classic symptoms of the alcoholic denial syndrome, which are essentially the same as that of the spoiled, overprivileged rich kid that he was and still is: it's always someone else's fault, never mine. Having muffed his initial response to the disaster of Nawlins, BushBoy is now busy making frequent 'visits' - most likely at the behest of The Party, which is having nervous conniptions due to the growing public perception (true or not) of a racist, incompetent, disconnected political class of drones, and God Help Us! there's an ELECTION coming up next year, with plenty of GOP congressional seats on the line. On the plus side, BushBoy got to sleep on the USS Iwo Jima, altho his handlers wisely decided to forgo the flight suit & "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner this time around. Hmm...maybe if he spends enough time sleeping or touring military ships, he'll get points towards his national guard service? FEMA/Chertoff/Brown: FEMA claims it isn't their job. If that's the case, howcum it was their job the last few disasters, when they came in and did decently? All of a sudden they're only planners & money collectors? Pity they didn't bother to let anyone else know about their self-directed job description change. Brown is a hapless political appointee, given the job by Bush for whatever he did during the last election (probably providing money to buy the election), on the theory that anyone who can handle Arabian horses can manage a national emergency. Kinda lame thinking, that, but then Bush isn't known for deep thinking. Chertoff - another political buyoff - spent all his time (and Homeland Defense money) developing the most deluxe private executive dining area and offices he could imagine, complete with a 24-hour, on-call team of designer executive chefs, real leather upholstered chairs, and original art on the walls, according to articles on same by the Wash. Post. So THAT'S where the emergency preparedness funds that were supposed to pay for E.P. training & additional first responder equipment et al went to? They sure as hell never made it to MY fire dept., altho we were supposed to start getting the goods over two years ago. The Governor: In the day or so after the actual hit, I don't remember hearing or seeing ANYTHING about or from her. Not a peep. I even heard speculation that she'd cut & run & was hiding out, overwhelmed & at a loss - and not from conservatives, either. She did not apparently bother to ask for aid until well past time to do so (during this kind of situation, any time AFTER the crisis itself is 'past time'). Somebody was asking about drivers for all those buses pictured in a municipal parking lot. Anyone with a CDL can theoretically drive one. I have, a couple of times in a pinch, and if I don't have to go around a bunch of tight corners, they aren't too hard to handle, so I presume if she'd called out the guard (what's left of it) to drive, they would have been able to get at least some of those suckas on the move. Plus there surely were some bus drivers still in city the day before or so. Anyway, point is, she wasn't very visible either during or immediately after the crisis, engendering my thought: so then where exactly was she? Ditto the mayor, altho he did start getting commendably vocal very quickly, which is what he is paid to do; and apparently did what little he could (by then as noted above, it was too late anyway) to get as many as possible at least above the waters, even if it meant throwing everyone into the dome, where despite previous scenarios & 'drills' there were no supplies. One would think in light of claims that drills had been carried out, that there would be some supplies somewhere, hey? No? Oh, well. Live & learn. He could, at least, have ordered all available cops to the dome as well, since theoretically *everyone* in the city was there. At least maybe there'd have been some kind of order. The people: Far too many who DID have the capacity to flee, but didn't, for various idiotic reasons having nothing to do with transportation or leaving pets behind. Far too many other perfectly nice people who were immobilized by bad planning by political drones of all levels, and lack of facilities/capabilities themselves, and unfortunately they paid the full price of such stupidity on the part of others. The City: Nawlins itself has since the inception been situated on the stupidest, worst possible site available in the entire area. When it was populated by pirates, whores, & river traders, it didn't matter if it got wiped out every few years; there weren't more than a couple hundred people there, anyway, so no great loss to just put up a bunch of wood shanties & set up shop again. But to allow such a massive urban infrastructure to develop over the last 100 years or so was & is insanity & stupidity at its grossest. This place has been betting it's life for decades - and finally lost the toss big time. If nothing else, now is the time to pack up & rebuild on higher (if there is any) ground, but I doubt anyone in authority has the brains to stand up & make it so. Pity they won't leave Honore in charge of the rebuilding as well. The Media: well, why not? They're convenient, and as long as everyone else is getting flogged, may as well take a swipe at them, too, lest they feel left out. For the most part, tho, they seem to have done pretty well at getting out messages to the clueless & everyone else that there were PROBLEMS down here, so maybe they get a lolly. They also seem to me to be kind of like the canary in the coal mine, in that if THEY could get food, transportation, & water to their people on site, then why couldn't the politicians do the same? FEMA couldn't get water in to the people in the dome? Why not? CNN managed. The media in that respect served a very useful purpose of putting the lie to those who claim that 'there was no way' to do XYZ.
The main lesson I drew from all this, is that all current politicians ought to be shot, and perhaps no one ought to be allowed to run for office or hold high gov't positions without actual experience in command, such as a former general, mother superior, etc. All in all, a pretty sorry story all around from those supposedly "in charge" or in command, even if it's just in their own minds. Right, George?
27 - StrangeCo
"[W]hen one is President, one accepts final and ultimate responsibility, whether one is actually involved or not. Guess 'the buck stops here' legend of Harry Truman never made it to Smirk's attention, huh?" Bill Clinton's either. I quote Janet Reno regarding the Waco fire at the Branch Davidian compound: "The buck stops with me."
28 - zingOne4me
SHOOT THE MESSENGER
The Army Corps of Engineers is being held accountable for something that they didn't do. This is a classic case of "Shoot the messenger" rather than listening to the message. The Army Corps of Engineers was asking for money to fix the levees and ended up being the scapegoats charged with breaking them down. They were the ones saying that the levees needed work. But, FUNDING WAS NOT AVAILABLE due to the Iraq War, where the U. S. was spedning $5000,000/per minute...
When the Army Corps of Engineers asked for needed funds to rebuild the levees in 2002, they were rebuffed because *ALL* available funding had been diverted to the Iraq War. (Let me get this straight, we were looking for Bin Laden in Iraq because Iraq had oil and Afghanistan didn't).
The millions needed to shore up the levees in Louisiana in 2002 lasted only a few hours in Iraq.
"War Costing $720 Million Each Day, Group Says"
The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute, according to the group's analysis of the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes.
George W. Bush gave us bloated government "slashing taxes, spending trillions, running a swollen debt to Chinese banks for funding the war in Iraq. Four years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the flood exposed an inept emergency response system. After telling his soon-to-be-sacked FEMA director, “Brownie, you’re doing a heckuva job,” Bush’s popularity plunged, swamped by an image of detachment and incompetence.
A year ago the US army corps of engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, the Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project. Operated by the corps of engineers, levees and pumping stations were strengthened and renovated. In 2001, when George Bush became president, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely potential disasters - after a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. By 2004, the Bush administration cut the corps of engineers' request for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80%. By the beginning of this year, the administration's additional cuts, reduced by 44% since 2001, forced the corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate debated adding funds for fixing levees, but it was too late.