The Ashford Zone Blog

– sent to me by email

I didn’t see it, but apparently the CNN people were unimpressed (via Americablog):

Daryn Kagen [Rush Limbaugh’s squeeze]:  I gotta say that was rather an odd thing to be watching. The president finally making it to the gulf coast after five days, and then spending a big chunk of time, when he could be out seeing the devastation, getting a briefing that frankly he could have gotten back at the White House, if not then, then on board Air Force One. A lot of that seemed like a political opportunity for the cameras and for the Republican governors of Mississippi and Alabama.

Bill Schneider:  I’m not sure that’s what most Americans and certainly most people in the area wanted to hear, as if the president were being filled in, told what was going on, there was a lot of thanking a lot of congratulations. Look these are frantic desperate people who have lost everything, who are in a very desperate situation, what they want is someone to come there and say the government is in control, we have control of this situation, there’s a leader in charge here and we’re gonna make it work…. What people want there is leadership, they don’t want someone being briefed, they want leadership.

Yes, Bush really said this:

We’ve got a lot of rebuilding to do. First, we’re going to save lives and stabilize the situation. And then we’re going to help these communities rebuild. The good news is — and it’s hard for some to see it now — that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott’s house — he’s lost his entire house — there’s going to be a fantastic house. And I’m looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)

Whew!  Trent Lott will have a new house with a better porch.  The great national nightmare is over.

Josh Marshall makes an interesting point here, which I will attempt to paraphrase.

Certain government officials like FEMA director Michael Brown are insinuating that New Orleanians who ignored the warnings to evacuate are somewhat responsible for the predicament in which they now find themselves.  (I’ll leave aside the obvious point that many of those left behind simply didn’t not have the means to evacuate).

Yet, Bush and others are also saying that FEMA, the National Guard, etc. could never have foreseen the devastation that befell New Orleans.

So here’s the question:  Why does "lack of foresight" operate as an excuse for the inept government rescue operations, when that same "lack of foresight" meme is being used to criticize New Orleanians who didn’t evacuate?

In other words, if the government can be excused for not having a crystal ball foretelling the scope of the potential devastation, why should we expect that from ordinary (and presumably less-informed) citizens?

Read Krugman.  Now.

says the New York Times

… but Cheney is still on vacation!

Bush eats cake and plays the guitar, and Condi buys shoes.  From Steve Soto

From the Gawker.com website today:

According to Drudge, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has recently enjoyed a little Broadway entertainment. And Page Six reports that she’s also working on her backhand with Monica Seles. So the Gulf Coast has gone all Mad Max, women are being raped in the Superdome, and Rice is enjoying a brief vacation in New York. We wish we were surprised.

What does surprise us: Just moments ago at the Ferragamo on 5th Avenue, Condoleeza Rice was seen spending several thousands of dollars on some nice, new shoes (we’ve confirmed this, so her new heels will surely get coverage from the WaPo’s Robin Givhan). A fellow shopper, unable to fathom the absurdity of Rice’s timing, went up to the Secretary and reportedly shouted, “How dare you shop for shoes while thousands are dying and homeless!” Never one to have her fashion choices questioned, Rice had security PHYSICALLY REMOVE the woman.

Angry Lady, whoever you are, we love you. You are a true American.

And what did the RNC do today in response to the news from New Orleans? They sent out an email pushing for the repeal of the estate tax next week.

Folks, you are going to see the collapse of the GOP in the coming weeks.

I hope Steve’s right.  He also throws in this alarming picture:

Yikes.

Bob Martinez, former governor of Florida (today’s NYT):

"The great thing about this president is that he doesn’t try to use tragedy to gain immediate attention for himself"

Banner on White House Hurricane Relief Page:

One of the things I write about often is how the Bush Adminsitration often fires (or marginalizes) knowledgeable people who contradict made-up policy with annoying things like facts, common sense, and honest-to-god expertise and experience. 

I wonder if one of those guys was Mike Parker, a former Republican congressman from Mississippi who briefly served as head of the Army Corps of Engineers from late 2001 to early 2002. 

Here’s what Parker said in 2002, on the occasion of his firing:

The assistant secretary of the Army, Mississippi’s former U.S. Rep. Mike Parker, was forced out Wednesday after he criticized the Bush administration’s proposed spending cuts on Army Corps of Engineers’ water projects, members of Congress said.

"Apparently he was asked to resign," said U.S. Rep. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a member of the House Appropriations Committee’s energy and water development subcommittee that oversees the corps’ budget.

Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, also said Parker was dismissed.

Parker’s nomination to head the corps drew heavy criticism last year from environmental groups pushing to downsize the agency, calling its flood control projects too costly and destructive.

Parker earned the ire of administration officials when he questioned Bush’s planned budget cuts for the corps, including two controversial Mississippi projects.

"I think he was fired for being too honest and not loyal enough to the president," said lobbyist Colin Bell, who represents communities with corps-funded projects.

Bell said Parker resigned about noon after being given about 30 minutes to choose between resigning or being fired.

He’s quoted in today’s Chicago Tribune saying, "I’m not saying it wouldn’t still be flooded, but I do feel that if it had been totally funded, there would be less flooding than you have."  Recall that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers requested $27 million for this fiscal year to pay for hurricane-protection projects around Lake Pontchartrain, and only received $5.7 million (and the Bush adminsitration wanted to give only $3.9 million)

Josh Marshall is on the case.

UPDATE:  Don’t miss Kevin Drum’s chronology of FEMA as it relates to flood control projects (or, alternatively, take a peak below the fold here).

Atrios:

Someone emails Josh Marshall a question a bunch of people have been raising in comments and email. The emergency preparedness for a medium scale biological or chemical attack, or the "dirty bomb" scenario, would be exactly identical to the kind of preparedness you’d have for a natural disaster of this type. Sure, some of the complications would be different in the various situations, but the basic needs – mass evacuation, temporary shelter, the provision of safe food and water, medical care – would be the same.

Haven’t they done fucking anything in 4 years?

[And] The head of FEMA was previously an estate planning lawyer.

Jeebus.

James Briggs:

MSNBC just cut to a press conference with Michael Chertoff. Chertoff, in the midst of the worst disaster in modern US history–forget the qualifier "natural"–was talking about a pilot program to train DC rail commuters in emergency response.

They fucking do not get it. They don’t even care. These people, from the president on down, are simply pissed off they have to deal with a disaster they can’t make political hay out of.

MSNBC cut away as soon as they realized the Secretary of Fatherland Security was talking about something other than the catastrophe he’s supposed to be in charge of. They should have stayed with him.

UPDATE: he was announcing that "September is National Preparedness Month." A canned photo op. The mind reels.

AP:

At least seven bodies were scattered outside, and hungry, desperate people who were tired of waiting broke through the steel doors to a food service entrance and began pushing out pallets of water and juice and whatever else they could find.

An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.

"I don’t treat my dog like that,” 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.  "I buried my dog.”   He added: "You can do everything for other countries but you can’t do nothing for your own people. You can go overseas with the military but you can’t get them down here.”

Anonymous EPA person:

We’re naming it Lake George, ’cause it’s his frickin fault. Have you seen all that data about the levee projects’ funding being cut over the past three years by the Prez, and the funding transferred to Iraq? The levee, as designed, might not have held back the surge from a direct Class 5 hit, but it certainly would not have crumbled on Monday night from saturation and scour erosion following a glancing blow from a Class 3. The 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.

Buloxi survivor, via Crooks and Liars:

"President Bush shouldn’t be the president no more."

And finally, the Rude Pundit on the "Empty Vessel President" (read the whole thing):

For there he was, our goddamned President, standing there in the picturesque Rose Garden, surrounded, like Al Capone with his capos, by his cabinet, as if to say, "Don’t worry – you won’t have to rely on me." Having been pried away from his "working vacation" like a meth addict from an iodine factory, Bush appeared irritated that he had to talk to us last night. He smirked, he gave a campaign-like laundry list of shit heading to New Orleans and elsewhere, he told us what we already fuckin’ knew from CNNMSNBCFox: that Hurricane Katrina was major, that his "folks" around him were ready to do their jobs, but, hell, at least he didn’t mention how jim-fuckin-dandy Iraq is.

As always, though, Bush made it all about him and his own defense of his own stupidity: "Right now the days seem awfully dark for those affected — I understand that," he said. On ABC’s Good Morning, Diane Sawyer, Bush said, "I fully understand people wanting things to have happened yesterday…I understand the anxiety of people on the ground."

***

Bush’s approach to the incredible madness and degradation and loss of life is the fucked up response of the righteous, the Mother Theresa approach, if you will: suffering is good because it makes you stronger. How can one believe that if it comes from someone who has never paused in the all-encompassing luxury of his life except to heave his drunken guts into toilets that’ll be cleaned by servants.

Yesterday he deigned to ascend above the earth to view the devastation below. And looking down, he saw it was bad. He called it by its name, "devastation," and, in fact, could come up with no other words for, lo, his vocabulary was limited.

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