It’s finally time to talk about New Orleans and what our government is NOT doing.
First off, here is the headline from a New York Times article:
White House Enacts a Plan to Ease Political Damage
WASHINGTON, Sept. 4 – Under the command of President Bush’s two senior political advisers, the White House rolled out a plan this weekend to contain the political damage from the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
So they are pretty much admitting that they FUCKED UP. But what are they doing about it? Trying to shift the blame to the Democrats. Of course.
Then there is this wonderful blog entry:
Look, it’s really very simple. On Saturday, August 27, 2005 — two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall — President George W. Bush assumed responsibility for the coordination of “all disaster relief efforts” in the State of Louisiana. This is the specific, undisputed language of Bush’s declaration of a State of Emergency, issued that day by the White House, and still available for viewing on the White House website. The responsibility for coordinating all disaster relief efforts in New Orleans clearly rested with the White House. Despite all the post-disaster spin by the Bush Faction and its sycophants, despite all the earnest media analyses, the lines of authority are clear and indisputable.
Then there is this headline from the Salt Lake Tribune:
Frustrated: Fire crews to hand out fliers for FEMA
ATLANTA – Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: “What are we doing here?”
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters – his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week – a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
Lovely. What a mess. And there are still people in New Orleans that need rescuing.
I can’t stand it.
Thanks to JWZ for pointing out these articles.
