Bush Presidency and Inadequacy Don't need First Mother's help
Barbara Bush: 'Victims poor anyway'

Commenting on the facilities that have been set up for the grief stricken victims of Katrina,  the cots crammed side-by-side  where the lights are always on and the sound of crying children, and crying adults too for that matter, never really stops,  -- former First Lady Barbara Bush concluded that the poor people of New Orleans had lucked out.

Barbara Bush, the former first lady, courted controversy by pointing out that many of the people forced out of their homes by Hurricane Katrina "were underprivileged anyway". Mrs Bush, who joined her husband, George, on a tour of the Houston Astrodome, said: "And so many of the people in the arena here were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them. What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality."

Mrs. Bush chuckles audibly as she observes just how great things are going for families that are separated from loved ones, people who have been forced to abandon their homes and the only community where they have ever lived, and parents who are explaining to children that their pets, their toys and in some cases their friends may be lost forever.

Apple don't fall far from the tree, does it?

Craig Crawford wants to cut the former first lady some slack:

"You just gotta believe Barbara Bush didn't mean it how it sounded, that the 'underprivileged' Katrina victims now in Texas shelters are better off than they were in their pre-hurricane homes. Let's be fair. They really are better off compared to being stranded -- or dead -- in their sunken homes. But it is a struggle to come up with a positive interpretation of what the First Mother said while touring Houston relief centers:

I'm sure they're just tickled pink.

Yes.....tickled pink due to the pepto bismal they must be drinking in quantity to get over the nausea of these kinds of inane statements.

Presdent Bush to lead investigation into his own inadequacy

"What I intend to do is to lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong," Bush said. "We want to make sure that we can respond properly if there's a WMD [weapons of mass destruction] attack or another major storm."

The debacle has made a mockery of claims that a new and efficient system had been put in place after the 9/11 attacks to tackle national emergencies - of which a hurricane-provoked flood of New Orleans was near the top of every list.

With missed opportunities before, during and after the storm, with FEMA run by an old pal of Joe Allbaugh's whose previous job had to do with horses, with Bush initially insisting the effort was going well when it most obviously was not.

"The president's declaration that 'I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees' has instantly achieved the notoriety of Condoleezza Rice's 'I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center.' The administration's complete obliviousness to the possibilities for energy failures, food and water deprivation, and civil disorder in a major city under siege needs only the Donald Rumsfeld punch line of 'Stuff happens' for a coup de grâce. How about shared sacrifice, so that this time we might get the job done right? After Mr. Bush's visit on 'Good Morning America' on Thursday, Diane Sawyer reported on a post-interview conversation in which he said, 'There won't have to be tax increases.' . . .

"Surely it's only a matter of time before Mr. Chertoff and the equally at sea FEMA director, Michael Brown (who also was among the last to hear about the convention center), are each awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom in line with past architects of lethal administration calamity like George Tenet and Paul Bremer."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, which has botched the Katrina operation from Day One, was also well aware of the problems of evacuating the poor. Its response:

Last year, FEMA spent $250,000 to conduct an eight-day hurricane drill for a mock killer storm hitting New Orleans. Some 250 emergency officials attended. Many scenarios now playing out, including a helicopter evacuation of the Superdome, were discussed in that drill for a fictional storm named Pam.

This year, the group was to design a plan to fix such unresolved problems as evacuating sick and injured people from the Superdome and housing tens of thousands of stranded citizens. But funding for that planning was cut, said Tolbert, who also was disaster chief for North Carolina.

This summer, as local officials were streamlining the counter-flow interstate traffic plan so that better-off New Orleans residents could leave more quickly, they also prepared a DVD for local churches and civil groups urging the poor to find a ride out of town.

They didn't say who from. They only said who it wouldn't be: The government. Even more amazing, the mayor of New Orleans took the city's buses -- the most viable means for getting poor residents out of town -- and used them to bring people to the Superdome, even as he was acknowledging that conditions there were bound to deteriorate.

From a Times-Picayune story from July 24 this year about the city's DVD warning (Nexis..no link). The story begins: "City, state and federal emergency officials are preparing to give the poorest of New Orleans' poor a historically blunt message: In the event of a major hurricane, you're on your own."   Will Bunch

Why was the issue of getting the poor and the car-less out of New Orleans treated like there was no solution, when there was so much that could have been done?  Katrina was a Category 5 Hurricane for two days before hitting land, with a problem on the scale that a federal role was clearly needed, why did FEMA suddenly punt?

The Breach:

One failure was in a spot that had just been rebuilt, not yet compacted, not planted, and not armed (hardened with rock/concrete). The project should have been done two years ago, but the federal gov't diverted 80% of the funding to Iraq. Other areas had settled by a few feet from their design specs, and the money to repair them was diverted to Iraq.

The NO paper raised hell about this time and again, to no avail. And who will take the blame for it? The Army Corps, because they're good soldiers and will never contradict the C in C. But Corps has had massive budget cuts across all departments (including wetland regulatory) since Bush took office, and now we've reaped what was sown. It really pisses me off to see the Corps get used by the Administration to shield Bush -- they do great work when they're funded. This was senseless, useless death caused not by nature but by budget decisions.  Wonkette

We see that the head of FEMA is now blaming the victims:

"I think the death toll may go into the thousands and, unfortunately, that's going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings," Michael Brown told CNN.

Andrew Sullivan who's hardly a liberal, is furious at the Bush team:

"I'm trying to think of what this event means in the national psyche. The complete collapse of effective government and of emergency procedures four years after 9/11 mean only one thing. We do not have an administration capable of running the country during the war on terror. They have bungled homeland security; they have mismanaged Iraq; they have dropped the ball in New Orleans. In each case, a conservative government does not seem to understand that law and order are always, always, the first priority. The glib self-congratulation of government official after official made me retch listening to them . . .

Sullivan also rips "the blithering idiot, Michael 'heck of a job' Brown, hired with no credentials to run a critical agency at a time of national peril. I guess some of us pundits bear the blame. We should have known that someone who had been fired for being unable to run an Arabian Horse Association had the job of responding to a national disaster in the war on terror. He was hired because a Bush crony, Joe Allbaugh (also hired because he was a major Bush fundraiser) liked him. The good ol' boy network at its most brazen. If the president wants to recover even a little from what has happened to his reputation, he has to fire Brown. Now. That's the test of whether he gets it. Not his furrowed brow press conferences. Not his spin. Not the desperate attempts by Republican partisans -- once again! -- to blame someone else down the chain of command."

VOF:  The devastation of trust in this countries abilities is no less devastating than this disaster.  It was and is the individuals that always rise to the occasions first.  Mr. President, rise to this need and do the right thing as you lead your investigation into your own shortcomings and the shortcomings of the agencies of your own making.  What on earth was the Hurricane Disaster Drill "Pam" about if not to ANTICIPATE worst case scenarios in New Orleans?  Stop "horsing" around ....Fire Brown.

While the political sniping continues, the president is trying to regain the initiative, as the Boston Globe reports:

"President Bush,  promised yesterday that he would lead an investigation into 'what went wrong' with the government's response and will dispatch Vice President Dick Cheney to 'assess our recovery efforts' in the region.

"But two hours later, Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary, told reporters the president would simply 'lead an effort' in the escalating catastrophe. McClellan was unclear about whether Bush would look into his own actions and vague about when and how the investigation would start, and rejected questions about whether the president should fire anyone responsible for the problems."

Doesn't sound like much of an investigation, and the announcement brought more ridicule in the blogosphere. Josh Marshall dismisses the move as "Bush to lead investigation into his own failure," while Andrew Sullivan says: "This is becoming a farce. Can anyone put him in touch with reality?"

Josh Marshall the genuine Bush Crisis is...:

"It's almost awe-inspiring to see the level of energy and coordination the Bush White House can bring to bear in a genuine crisis. Not hurricane Katrina, of course, but the political crisis they now find rising around them . . . The storyline and the outlines of the attack are now clear: pin the blame for the debacle on state and local authorities . . .

"This whole conversation we're having now is not about substance, but procedural niceties , excuses which it is beyond shameful for an American president to invoke in such a circumstance. We don't live in the 19th century. All you really needed was a subscription to basic cable to know almost all of the relevant details (at least relevant to know what sort of assistance was needed) about what was happening late last week. The president and his advisors want to duck responsibility by claiming, in so many words, that the Louisiana authorities didn't fill out the right forms. So what they're trying to pull is something like a DMV nightmare on steroids."

"This disaster has been extraordinarily revealing, exposing not only Bush's failure of leadership, and the deadly consequences of his distorted priorities but also the many, many years of political neglect of the poor and the needy by both political parties . . .

Greg Mitchell , who runs Editor & Publisher, lays casualties at Bush's doorstep:

"While the 9/11 'My Pet Goat' episode was certainly illuminating, it's not certain what might have worked out better that day had the president dropped the book and taken action. But his failure to grab the reins in the hurricane catastrophe for three days this week probably doomed hundreds, or more, to death. This is not mere incompetence, but dereliction of duty. The press should call it by its proper name."

But Ankle Biting Pundits is having none of it:

"To say the Left's reaction to Katrina is a public and political disgrace would be an understatement. They have sunk so low, they now politicize the weather. They take a perverse, twisted joy in the suffering of others because they are now convinced after a catalogue of failed P.R. stunts (Joe Wilson, Richard Clark, Fahrenheit 9-11, the fake 60 Minutes memo, Cindy Sheehan), they will finally get him . . .

"Katrina has brought out all the Left's old tricks: victimology, anti-corporate rhetoric, class warfare, racial division, Bush-hatred. It's old home day in the twisted mind of an American liberal."

"The victims in New Orleans are overwhelmingly poor and black, and it didn't take long for that to begin to elicit charges of a kind of racism. The head of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), said at a press conference Friday, 'We cannot allow it to be said that the difference between those who lived and those who died in this great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age, and skin color.' "First, this nation has been transfixed and heartbroken by the suffering of the black victims in New Orleans. It has been outraged by the acts of violence that have made their plight even more difficult. If the country is the least bit inclined to write off the misery in New Orleans as experienced by the wrong race and therefore not worth the bother, there is no evidence of it.

"Sadly, poverty and age have affected who got out and who didn't, as many of the poor and elderly didn't have cars or the resources to evacuate. Many of these people are black, but, pace Elijah Cummings, their skin color as such had nothing to do with whether they escaped the city. If the federal response has seemed flat-footed, does anyone believe that President Bush got on the phone with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Michael Brown, and said, 'Hey, Michael, let's slow-walk this thing -- we're talking about mostly black victims here'? Apparently some people do believe it. According to Jesse Jackson, 'Many black people feel that their race, their property conditions and their voting patterns have been a factor in the response.'

Voting patterns! Louisiana voted for Bush and just elected a Republican U.S. senator. Is it plausible to think Bush wanted to watch the state's major city sink into chaos for political reasons?"

Righteous Anger:

Jeff Jarvis sees a linguistic whitewashing:

"It's shocking -- it's downright obscene -- that journalists acting as self-appointed nannies censored New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin's angry speech demanding help for his city. The New York Times did it. TV did it. Journalists charged with reporting accurately bleeped 'ass' and 'goddamn' and they wouldn't let him say 'BS.' . . .

"What makes them think they should tone down his anger? He said these words for a reason. These words need to be said. Anger is justified. Shock is needed. These words are part of the story. But in our nannified culture today, in the era of the FCC and the PTC thinking they should control our speech, in this age of offense, these people think they need to protect us from words -- and thus from anger, from bluntness, from honesty. That is dishonest."

He's got a #@$&!!* point.

Many online reports contributed to this story.