Historians ought not to be in the prophecy business but I'll venture this one: Katrina will be seen as a watershed in the public and political life of the US, because it has put back into play the profound question of American government. Ever since Ronald Reagan proclaimed that government was not the answer but the problem, conservatism has stigmatised public service as parasitically unpatriotic, an anomaly in the robust self-sufficiency of American life. For the most part, Democrats have been too supine, too embarrassed and too inarticulate to fight back with a coherent defence of the legitimacy of democratic government. Now, if ever, is their moment; not to revive the New Deal or the Great Society (though unapologetically preserving social security might be a start) but to stake a claim to being the party that delivers competent, humane, responsive government, the party of public trust.

For the most shocking difference between 9/11 and Katrina was in what might have been expected in the aftermath of disaster. For all the intelligence soundings, it was impossible to predict the ferocity, much less the timing, of the 9/11 attacks. But Katrina was the most anticipated catastrophe in modern American history. Perhaps the lowest point in Bush's abject performance last week was when he claimed that no one could have predicted the breach in the New Orleans levees, when report after report commissioned by him, not to mention a simulation just last year, had done precisely that. But he had cut the budget appropriation for maintaining flood defences by nearly 50%, so that for the first time in 37 years Louisiana was unable to supply the protection it knew it would need in the event of catastrophe. Likewise Fema, which under Bill Clinton had been a cabinet level agency reporting directly to the president, had under his successor been turned into a hiring opportunity for political hacks and cronies and disappeared into the lumbering behemoth of Homeland Security. It was Fema that failed the Gulf; Fema which failed to secure the delivery of food, water, ice and medical supplies desperately asked for by the Mayor of New Orleans; and it was the president and his government-averse administration that had made Fema a bad joke.

In the last election campaign George W Bush asked Americans to vote for him as the man who would best fulfil the most essential obligation of government: the impartial and vigilant protection of its citizens. Now the fraudulence of the claim has come back to haunt him, not in Baghdad but in the drowned counties of Louisiana. In the recoil, disgust and fury felt by millions of Americans at this abdication of responsibility, the president - notwithstanding his comically self-serving promise to lead an inquiry into the fiasco - will assuredly reap the whirlwind.

Falling on His Butterknife

Excuse Me?

Something you really don't want to come across at a time when we have an embarrassed president under ungodly pressure in need of a distraction.

Has to do with the pre-emptive use--by this president--of nukes. For even less reason or provocation, than his war on Iraq.

Which was planned, and has gone, so well.

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

The document, written by the Pentagon's Joint Chiefs staff but not yet finally approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, would update rules and procedures governing use of nuclear weapons to reflect a preemption strategy first announced by the Bush White House in December 2002.

"Left Hand, let me introduce you to Right Hand."

Thank god FEMA is on the job. Otherwise a crack team of Mexican disaster specialists wouldn't have been promptly(and to the great confusion and anger of the Mexican government) assigned to San Antonio.

What the fuck is wrong with the Bush administration? Is being terminally retarded part of their job descriptions?

Population shifts caused by the exodus of hurricane victims from the Gulf Coast could have ripple effects for years to come in Louisiana political races and perhaps beyond.

How big depends on how many people stay away, which ones stay away and where they end up putting down roots.

The early thinking is that the evacuees least likely to return to their homes in Louisiana may be the poorest -- and thus, Democrats for the most part. That would hurt the party in a state where Republicans already were making inroads.

If the lion's share of those leaving settle in Texas, that could work to the advantage of Democrats in President Bush's home state.

"I'm believing that the greatest displacement occurs among those who are traditionally Democratic voters," said Elliott Stonecipher, an independent political consultant from Shreveport, La.

"Based on sheer demographics, those who are Republican voters have the wherewithal and, we believe, the will to go home and rebuild," he said.

While on the tour of a shelter with top administration officials from Washington, including U.S. Secretary of Labor Elaine L. Chao and U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, DeLay stopped to chat with three young boys resting on cots.

The congressman likened their stay to being at camp and asked, ``Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?''

They nodded yes, but looked perplexed.


Behind the president's public embrace of Mr. Brown was the realization within the administration that the director's ignorance about the evacuees had further inflamed the rage of the storm's poor, black victims and created an impression of a White House that did not care about their lives.One prominent African-American supporter of Mr. Bush who is close to Karl Rove, the White House political chief, said the president did not go into the heart of New Orleans and meet with black victims on his first trip there, last Friday, because he knew that White House officials were "scared to death" of the reaction.

"If I'm Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we're living in Rwanda?" said the supporter, who spoke only anonymously because he did not want to antagonize Mr. Rove.

********************

The Gulf Coast looked, said Bush, like it had been hit with "the worst kind of weapon." The President is right, responded Representative Dennis Kucinich. "Indifference is a weapon of mass destruction." While most of the affluent of New Orleans left by car or plane, the poor had no way out. They were told to go to the Superdome and convention center, where--unbelievably--there were inadequate supplies of food and water, no electricity, befouled sanitation facilities and no police protection. When it came time to rescue and relocate the displaced, the Bush Administration placed the onus on state and local officials and called on citizens to give to charities. But faith-based disaster relief is no substitute for an effective, organized, rapid government response.

Since New Orleans is a major center of oil imports and refining, Katrina roiled already tight energy markets. Gas companies, wallowing in record profits, took the occasion to gouge Americans at the pump. The companies' rapacity and the country's vulnerability are direct results of Bush's Big Oil energy policy, his failure to lead a drive for energy independence by investing in conservation and in renewable and diverse energy sources. Instead of calling for an excess-profits tax on oil companies to help pay for the rebuilding, Bush immediately asserted that no tax increase was necessary.

Before joining FEMA, his only previous stint in emergency management, according to his bio posted on FEMA's website, was "serving as an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight." The White House press release from 2001 stated that Brown worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., from 1975 to 1978 "overseeing the emergency services division." In fact, according to Claudia Deakins, head of public relations for the city of Edmond, Brown was an "assistant to the city manager" from 1977 to 1980, not a manager himself, and had no authority over other employees. "The assistant is more like an intern," she told TIME. "Department heads did not report to him." Brown did do a good job at his humble position, however, according to his boss. "Yes. Mike Brown worked for me. He was my administrative assistant. He was a student at Central State University," recalls former city manager Bill Dashner. "Mike used to handle a lot of details. Every now and again I'd ask him to write me a speech. He was very loyal. He was always on time. He always had on a suit and a starched white shirt."

In response, Nicol Andrews, deputy strategic director in FEMA's office of public affairs, insists that while Brown began as an intern, he became an "assistant city manager" with a distinguished record of service. "According to Mike Brown," she says, "a large portion [of the points raised by TIME] is very inaccurate."

Brown's lack of experience in emergency management isn't the only apparent bit of padding on his resume, which raises questions about how rigorously the White House vetted him before putting him in charge of FEMA. Under the "honors and awards" section of his profile at FindLaw.com — which is information on the legal website provided by lawyers or their offices—he lists "Outstanding Political Science Professor, Central State University". However, Brown "wasn't a professor here, he was only a student here," says Charles Johnson, News Bureau Director in the University Relations office at the University of Central Oklahoma (formerly named Central State University). "He may have been an adjunct instructor," says Johnson, but that title is very different from that of "professor." Carl Reherman, a former political science professor at the University through the '70s and '80s, says that Brown "was not on the faculty." As for the honor of "Outstanding Political Science Professor," Johnson says, "I spoke with the department chair yesterday and he's not aware of it." Johnson could not confirm that Brown made the Dean's list or was an "Outstanding Political Science Senior," as is stated on his online profile.

Hey Tom, Your Shoelace Is Untied

Oh, look. While DeLay probably wasn't looking, his PAC just got indicted, just as Jack Abramoff was not too long ago. Yes, I am laughing about it.

How long before DeLay himself is invited to the pokey?

It takes a while, but eventually all bastards get theirs.

Incidentally, when DeLay was trying to shove the redistricting of Texas down Democrats' throats, the Democrats in the Texas legislature left and went to New Orleans to deny a quorum. DeLay--who is no longer, of course, and wasn't at the time, in the Texas legislature--had Homeland Security immediately send a helicopter to bring them back. So that was a priority for DHS, but Hurricane Katrina was not.

Something to keep in mind...another would be: I wonder, given his claim he believes in God(though how he could and still do all he does with a clear conscience is beyond me), if Bush wonders, if he had met with Cindy Sheehan, would he now be in the shit he's in?

Nah, I'm sure he doesn't even think about that. God's poetic justice is for other people, not Dubya!

Show Us Your Tits Or Die

Do you really think Abu Ghraib was an aberration?

Female survivors of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were urged by government rescuers to flash their breasts in order to receive help in the immediate aftermath of the storm.

That according to English tourists who are now just returning to the United Kingdom, relating their horror stories to British media.

Ged Scott, 36, of Liverpool, was on his annual vacation at New Orleans' Ramada Hotel with his wife Sandra, 37, and their 7-year-old son, Ronan.

"I could not describe how bad the authorities were, taking photographs of us as we are standing on the roof waving for help, for their own personal photo albums, little snapshot photographs," Scott told BBC News.

Scott said there was a group of girls standing on the lobby's roof, calling out to passing rescuers for help.

"[The authorities] said to them, 'Well, show us what you've got' – doing signs for them to lift their T-shirts up. The girls said no, and [the rescuers] said 'well fine,' and motored off down the road in their motorboat. That's the sort of help we had from the authorities," he said.

New Orleans is noted for women flashing their breasts in public, especially during the annual Mardi Gras festival.

Scott called the relief operation "horrendous," noting police officers had taken "souvenir" photographs of stranded people begging for help.

"The only information we got from anybody in authority was if a policeman came past and we shouted to them out of the windows. The only information we ever got off them was negative, 'Do not go here. Do not go there'. There was no, 'Are you OK? Are you safe? Have you got water?' Most of the time they would ignore us."

Scott recounted that at night, police completely vanished, leaving stranded hotel guests and staff to defend themselves.

"You would hear shots ringing out during the night and that was one of the most worrying things, because we had no security," Scott said. "We patrolled the halls and checked the doors throughout the night in the hotel – but if someone had wanted to come in, there was not much we could have done about it."

I Repeat

Fire FEMA head Michael Brown. Fucking now. Every minute this moron is in office Americans are in danger. Keeping him as FEMA head counts as treason, in my view.

But I mean, Jesus--Even Ann Coulter Jr., or Michelle Malkin as the rest of the world knows her, is calling for his head.

The disastrous aftermath is neither entirely the fault of local and state officials nor entirely the fault of the feds. If someone is a worthless sack of bones, I'll say so. And I don't care if he has "Bush appointee" stamped on his forehead or a GOP elephant tattooed to his backside. Brown's clueless public comments after landfall are reason enough to give him the boot...and he should have never been there in the first place.

Get the clue, George. You're even losing your devoted cultists. Or did you only care about them when they agreed with you? Were you just using them too?

What do you want to bet that, in a year or two, when investigations have gained such momentum they cannot be stopped anymore, they'll claim Bush had Alzheimer's all this time?

Thousands More

This is what happens when you leave people to die. This. And the fucking Republicans are talking about penalizing the victims.

What, will you fine them the pennies on their eyes? Oh, wait, there are no pennies and there are no eyes.

Bodies found piled in freezer at Convention Center

By Brian Thevenot
Staff writer

Arkansas National Guardsman Mikel Brooks stepped through the food service entrance of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center Monday, flipped on the light at the end of his machine gun, and started pointing out bodies.

"Don't step in that blood - it's contaminated," he said. "That one with his arm sticking up in the air, he's an old man."
Then he shined the light on the smaller human figure under the white sheet next to the elderly man.

"That's a kid," he said. "There's another one in the freezer, a 7-year-old with her throat cut."

He moved on, walking quickly through the darkness, pulling his camouflage shirt to his face to screen out the overwhelming odor.
"There's an old woman," he said, pointing to a wheelchair covered by a sheet. "I escorted her in myself. And that old man got bludgeoned to death," he said of the body lying on the floor next to the wheelchair.

Brooks and several other Guardsmen said they had seen between 30 and 40 more bodies in the Convention Center's freezer. "It's not on, but at least you can shut the door," said fellow Guardsman Phillip Thompson.

The scene of rotting bodies inside the Convention Center reflected those in thousands of businesses, schools, homes and shelters across the metropolitan area. The official death count from Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana was 71 as of Monday evening, but that included only those bodies that had been brought to a make-shift morgue in St. Gabriel.

Nearly a full week after Hurricane Katrina, a rescue force the size of an invading army had not yet begun the task of retrieving the bodies Sunday. What's more, officials appeared to have no plan.

Daniel Martinez, a spokesman for FEMA working on Interstate 10 in eastern New Orleans, said plans for body recovery "are not being released yet."

Dozens of rescue workers questioned Monday said they knew of no protocol or collection points for bodies; none said they had retrieved even one of the many corpses seen floating in neighborhoods around the city as they searched for survivors.

Scores of rescue workers this week repeated the same mantra, over and over: We can't worry about the dead; we're still trying to save the living.

But as rescue teams across the city said they had checked nearly every house for survivors, the enormity of the death that lay in Hurricane Katrina's wake came into sharp focus even as the plans for taking care of the dead remained murky.

Mayor Ray Nagin, addressing the potential body count for the storm for the first time, said the storm may have claimed more than 10,000 lives.

In a news conference Monday morning, Deputy Chief Warren Riley said his department was "not responsible for recovery."

"We don't have a body count, but I can tell you it's growing. It's growing," he said.

As the rescue missions covered more and more ground but yielded fewer survivors, New Orleans Police Deputy Chief Steve Nicholas said that the time has come to start dealing with the dead.

"I know we're still rescuing people, but I think it's time we start pulling out the bodies," he said.

The highest concentration of casualties from Hurricane Katrina likely will come in the Lower 9th Ward, St. Bernard Parish, areas first inundated on Aug. 29 with floodwaters that engulfed second story homes in minutes. New Orleans also will likely see mass casualties, New Orleans Police Capt. Timothy Bayard said.

"We're going see a lot more bodies out of New Orleans East than we anticipated," he said.

In just one subdivision, Sherwood Forest, survivors who showed up to the Convention Center on Monday said police told them roughly 90 people in the subdivision had died.

In St. Bernard, 22 bodies were found lashed together. Officials surmised the drowning victims had tried to stay together to keep themselves from being washed away in the storm.

Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu said "more than a thousand" people had died in St. Bernard. "When the death toll comes out, it's going to be a jolt for everybody," he said. "I'll be surprised if the casualties in St. Bernard are less than a thousand."

Even Uptown near the river, one of the few spots of dry land, a body lay in front of a white wooden shotgun double at 4732 Laurel St. The body of an older woman lay under a gray blanket, pinned down at the corners by brick and slate, adorned with a plastic-wrapped flower bouquet. Above her, a yellow cardboard sign quoting John 3:16 had been taped to the window.

Alcede Jackson
Rest in Peace
In the loving arms of Jesus

Given the length of time many had been dead, and in the water, some of the bodies already might be unrecognizable, and some may never be recovered.

Many trapped by flood waters in shelters found their own ways of dealing with those who died in their midst.

Near an elementary school at Poland and St. Claude avenues, Dwight and Wilber Rhodes, two brothers, said they had tried to save a middle-aged man and woman at the Convention Center who appeared to have drowned.

"We performed CPR on them, but they were already dead," Dwight Rhodes said. "So we took the food out of the freezer and put the bodies in."

Of the four bodies that lay just inside the food service entrance of the Convention Center, the woman in the wheelchair rattled Brooks the most. When he found her two days before among the sea of suffering in front of the Convention Center where one of the last refugee camps evacuated, her husband sat next to her. He had only one concern when Brooks and some of his comrades carted her away.

"Bring me back my wheelchair," he recalled the man telling him.

One of the bodies, they said, was a girl they estimated to be 5 years old. Though they could not confirm it, they had heard she was gang-raped.

"There was an old lady that said the little girl had been raped by two or three guys, and that she had told another unit. But they said they couldn't do anything about it with all the people there," Brooks said. "I would have put him in cuffs, stuck him in the freezer and left him there."

Brooks and his unit came to New Orleans not long after serving a year of combat duty in Iraq, taking on gunfire and bombs, while losing comrades with regularity. Still, the scene at the Convention Center, where they conducted an evacuation this week, left him shell-shocked.

"I ain't got the stomach for it, even after what I saw in Iraq," said Brooks, referring to the freezer where the bulk of the bodies sat decomposing. "In Iraq, it's one-on-one. It's war. It's fair. Here, it's just crazy. It's anarchy. When you get down to killing and raping people in the streets for food and water … And this is America. This is just 300 miles south of where I live."

If I could ask God for only one favor right now, I would wish what happened to the people in that convention center upon the entire motherfucking Republican party.

God will not be mocked, you bastards. If I were you I'd stop invoking his name right the fuck now.

We Are All Accomplices
Bush's people are doing their best to chant the words "blame game" until they have fully exorcised public fury against them for standing by with their thumbs up their asses while a city died. Even the media are now starting to pick up this thread, that to criticize this administration, to point out what we all saw happen, to point out that gee, they don't even seem to give a shit and are already forgetting about it--and would like us to do the same, thanks very much--is somehow to delay the rescue operations.

I'd like to see how they hide the stink of their crimes once the bodies in the houses emerge from the water being pumped out now. But then, if they can prevent us from seeing photos of soldiers who died for this country, why not photos of a city full of dead bodies in New Orleans?(click and find out that indeed they have already done this)

But you know, they're right in a way. We are all complicit in their deaths.

We are complicit because we allowed this man to be appointed president before the votes were counted in 2000.

We are complicit because we let him spend most of his presidency vacationing.

We are complicit because we didn't keep asking why the Air Force was told to stand down on 9/11, and didn't keep asking why Bush took no action then to help Americans then either, and didn't call them on their lies afterward, about who was responsible for taking no action, about why they didn't want a commission to investigate it.

We are complicit because we never asked why it was more important that the government have the power to look at our library records than for potential terrorists to be denied access to firearms.

We are complicit because when the man in charge of security on 9/11 told us that our government let us down, we did not stop that government when its only response was to destroy the reputation of that man, and any other who pointed out that they had failed us, were likely to fail us again, and didn't care to fix a single thing.

We are complicit because we let this president lie us into war and squander lives, treasure, equipment, our national reputation and our moral code on a war of choice against a country that never committed a single act against ours that any of us can name, a war that did not even bring us cheap oil, not to mention anything like peace or security anywhere.

We are complicit because we let him crow early about victory and then dare the enemy to attack our troops, which he did not equip properly and still doesn't.

We are complicit because we listened to him and didn't so much believe him as accept, because we assumed there was nothing we could do. At which point there wasn't.

We are complcit because we let him ruin the security of the CIA for petty political payback, and thus the security of this country, and let him, indeed, be careless with that to a fault while scaring us every minute and never asking why, if we were in so much danger, he wasn't doing anything to actually defend us or protect us from danger.

We are complicit because we never questioned why it took him forever to get up from reading My Pet Goat or read a memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US" but was willing to rush back to Washington to sign a bill to save a single dead Florida woman's life.

We are complicit because we allowed him to become president again despite his hands still dripping with our blood, because we allowed him to claim his opponent would get us killed.

We are complicit because we do not remember that words mean things and lead to actions, because we act like everything will have a happy ending and that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.

We have dishonored every death from 9/11, from Iraq, from Afghanistan, by not questioning the president, by allowing him to weasel and bully his way out of accountability every time he has done the same dishonest thing; by agreeing to the spell he has put over us, in which for some reason our minds start to short-circuit when we begin to realize the enormity of our foolishness.

Because they understand that public image and approval ratings, ultimately, mean nothing if our anger never translates into action, and it never does. If we never hold him to account, it doesn't matter what kind of monster he is, because either way he'll still be president, and being president, by any means necessary, is the whole ballgame, with or without honor. In fact, having no honor to lose probably makes it easier. Low expectations have always been his friend.

Our president does not care if he is good. The power is enough. And how much respect can he have for a country that despises him and still elects him?

We let New Orleans die because we let this incompetent bastard have our highest, most sacred office. If we did that, we must not care about the possible consequences. We have treated casually what generations died to achieve, and are we now shocked at the consequences?

This is what it looks like when you let that happen. Cities die. Americans die. How many deaths have we endured because this man has been president?

We had better learn to live with them because we asked for it. We put him in charge and didn't think it would make a difference who was in that office. If that's the course we decided on, no matter if we think it was foolish now, then we must accept that the guilt is ours as well. We all killed New Orleans, and every baby who died is smeared red on each of us, just the same as if we had hired a train engineer who was drunk and derailed the train, killing everyone aboard. What did we expect? We knew the engineer was a drunk, but we trusted it would work out, not because of any reason but because it was easier than worrying too much about it. And then we act surprised when babies starve to death and cities are left to die.

If you put a fool in power, he will do foolish things. That's what fools do.

You do not criticize a monster. You do not stand in front of a dragon and whine that his breath is a little too hot, and ask if he can eat the virgin a little more politely.

You stop him, that's what you do. Who are we expecting to come in and do so? It's our job and we won't.

Bush knows we won't stop him, that we can't stop him, and that we will make no sacrifice to stop him. And he's laughing, laughing every day about it.

We have pissed on the legacy of our ancestors and our suffering is deserved. We have lost America for no better reason than, maybe, we were bored with it. This is what it looks like when you let that happen.

Remember feeling safe?

You must not have liked it very much.

We lie in the bed we have made, try our best to keep our eyes fixed on the cracks in the ceiling, and think of England as he does what he likes. Have you learned to enjoy it yet? You will. Or, anyway, you may as well.

Stop them, or shut up and go back to watching American Idol.