Topping the list of the most asinine things Bush has ever said (and they have been many), he said "No one could have predicted the levees would be breached." Of course, FEMA predicted it in early 2001,
Scientific American predicted it in October 2001, the Louisiana state government has been predicting it for years, and I (a person who makes a point of not watching the news because it makes me too angry) knew it was likely last Saturday. But no one could have known.
Whether those of you out there think that repairing the levees and responding to the disaster
should be the federal government's job or not, the fact remains that it was the Army Corps of Engineers that was assigned to repair and maintain the levees, and that the Department of Homeland Security's
website specifically says that it is that department's job to be in charge of first response to natural disasters. So no matter whose responsibility it
should be, it
is the federal government's.
Other states began offering their National Guards as early as Sunday night, starting with New Mexico. The federal paperwork to authorize them to go into the affected states was not approved until Thursday.
As for the "federal agencies couldn't go in unless the governor requested it" bullshit, Katherine Blanco's four-page written request for federal aid, dated Monday, is posted on the Louisiana state government's website.
Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State, who often gives speeches about growing up as a black woman in Alabama, was asked if the slow response might be related to the fact that most of those affected are black. She stated that she could not believe that anyone in America would fail to help someone based on that person's skin color.
The repair work on the levees, which was going at a fair clip today, stopped as soon as President Bush left the area. (Note that yes, that is indeed a statement by Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu.)
And along the same lines the German TV station ZDF reported that the food distribution point where Bush was giving out food was torn down as soon as he left. (I don't read German, but ZDF News's page on Hurricane Katrina is here and another station's (?) page here, so maybe someone who does could find the article?)
The head of FEMA, Michael "Brownie" Brown, was forced to resign from his last job as commissioner of the I-something Arabian Horses Association under a cloud of suspicion and financial mismanagement that completely crippled the agency, which is no longer in existence.
Both Brown and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, have repeatedly said, to the media, that this debacle is the fault of those who didn't evacuate. Okay, geniuses, tell me: when every last Greyhound bus is booked, the airport is closed, and someone doesn't have a car, how should they evacuate? And are you forgetting that it was !@#%$&* FEMA that told those people to go in the Superdome and they'd be safe?!?!?!?!
The fact that Bush was in the state of Louisiana meant that for "security reasons," all helicopter traffic was banned. Including the helicopters in charge of delivering food to refugees. (For fuck's sake. Did they think the federal government's helicopter crews were going to assassinate Bush? On second thought, don't answer that.)
Various conservative media types such as Shep Shepard and Geraldo Rivera of Fox News, have basically freaked on-camera and told off the anchormen back in the studio for trying to put a positive spin on the situation.
And to top it all off, some gas stations are having to close, not because they're out of gas, but because their pumps have been set to allow prices only up to $2.999. Gas being over $3 (it was $3.139 here today, and gas in New Jersey is generally pretty cheap), the pumps won't work.
Just for the record, I don't blame President Bush for this debacle. I blame the entire Executive and Legislative branches.
But for fuck's sake, I could have shown a more Presidential response. Starting with appearing on TV over the weekend, repeatedly, urging those in the areas where the hurricane was predicted to hit to get the fuck out. From Washington. Where he should have been all week. For fuck's sake, I would feel guilty to be on vacation right now, and I'm not the fucking government! This is the biggest disaster ever to hit the United States. The affected area is 90,000 square miles. There are 100,000 refugees and millions who are homeless. I want the entire fucking federal government, from the President/Vice President and the Speaker of the House/President Pro Tem of the Senate all the way down to high school kids doing summer internships, to be working overtime every day, seven days a week, until this thing is taken care of. And the same goes for the governors and legislatures of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. And the county/parish and municipal governments (what's left of them, anyway).
::
This was written by my wife this evening. I don't think I could have said it better myself, so I stole it. I think it sums up the reasons for the incandescent rage that we're collective feeling right now.
I am passionate about politics. I am passionate because I believe government has a large role in helping people - to make people's lives better is government's purpose, in my opinion. So to see what I consider to be a catastrophic failure of that purpose makes me very, very angry and is behind the reaction I think you're seeing amongst so many who consider themselves liberal.
This is political because it is the government's role to provide comprehensive and effective disaster relief to its populace. That's a platform, in the guise of national security, that Bush ran on in 2004, so the complete failure on that score simply underscores the manifold problems and utter ineptitude shown. This is a scandal of the highest degree, because people are dying. And if I'm pushing this as a political issue, it's because I never want to see anything like this happen again in my lifetime. These self-serving bastards need to be thrown out of government as soon as is possible, because compared to some of the things we have on the horizon, bird-flu being the most serious, this is popcorn. And if they can't manage even a half-assed response to this, then God help us when that comes.