KATRINA: BUSH RESPONDS
Declares war on farting cows
…
(re Spurrier; we need to at least chuckle occasionally. I actually do like Spurrier. I liked his verbal jabs, and as a UF addict, I loved his dominance of Georgia. And I respected him for walking away from the NFL. He recognized that he was failing. But I don’t worry about people who strongly dislike or despise him. It’s trivia.)

“Maybe if we can get Dubya to lie about a blow job!”

Hmm. Could this be a reference to Pres Clinto lying under oath in a sexual harasssment deposition?

“In a scathing 32-page ruling, Judge Susan Webber Wright said Clinton testified falsely in a Jan. 17, 1998, deposition that he had not had sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky. Judge Wright, of Federal District Court in Little Rock, Ark., said the President’s actions had subverted the rule of law and violated Ms. Jones’s right to information relevant to her case”

Dugger, Remembers

When an effort is tragically ineffective, it makes sense to figure out why. When an operation is failing, it makes sense to determine if someone is incompetent and needs to be removed. When hundreds of people die horrible and needless…

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Check the dateline on the WaPo article you cite:

By Manuel Roig-Franzia and Spencer Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 4, 2005; Page A01

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 –

The article was written Sept. 3 and published Sept. 4. The Friday in question is not Aug 26th but Sept. 2. How in the hell are we supposed to take you guys seriously if you don’t even know how to read a fucking newspaper article?

And again for crying out loud, that very same WaPo article ran with this correction:

Correction to This Article
A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/03/AR2005090301680.html

Oh, and much of the story you’re flogging is bogus.

“Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday [August 26], the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state s emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law.”

And from another WaPo story:

“Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana’s failure to measure up to national disaster response standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period. ‘Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at the local level,’ said one state official who works with FEMA. ‘Did the city have the situational awareness of what was going on within its borders? The answer was no.’”

We can rightly fault FEMA for typical bureaucratic bumbling, mismanagement of resources and a brainless application of regulations when plain common sense would have produced much better results.

But to keep arguing that the Bush administration “did nothing” is really starting to look stupid now.

Statement on Federal Emergency Assistance for Louisiana

(Copy here, just in case the Bushies catch on and delete the above-linked page from the White House website.)