You think it's getting better?
Lafayette in the blogosphere: Crooks and Liars highlights the Daily Advertiser's stories about FEMA's "office" in Lafayette, and Cajundome Director Greg Davis' take on the evacuee situation.
Exploiting the kickoff event of the Stones latest North American tour to raise cash for his own national fundraising efforts, Schwarzenegger resold $450 concert tickets to donors for $10,000 a piece, and offered fans the chance to sit with him in a luxury box for $100,000 a pop. But, Schwarzenegger quickly discovered, he was 'Playing With Fire,' once again thanks to the California Nurses Association with the help of the Massachusetts Nurses Association and Chicago nurses from the CNA-sponsored National Nurses Organizing Committee.
First, the ticket sales for the $100,000 seats were a bust. According to observers, only three people could be spotted in the luxury box, including the governor and his wife, Maria Shriver. Then much of the attention prior to the concert was on the protest.Dozens of RNs picketed outside Fenway Park, site of the concert, Sunday afternoon. As the nurses handed out 3,000 signs to Stones fans in the form of a large ticket that read "Stop Arnold. Sticky Fingers for Corrupt Corporate Cash. No Sympathy for Schwarzenegger," an airplane circled overhead bearing the banner, "Arnold's Beast of Burden: Corporate Cash."
Inside sitting nearly alone in his private box, Schwarzenegger must have been looking for Wild Horses to drag him away. Hundreds of fans held up the CNA signs. When Stones lead singer Mick Jagger welcomed the governor, he was lustily booed, and even Jagger mocked Schwarzenegger noting "As a matter of fact, he was seen out in front of Fenway Park tonight raising funds by scalping tickets and tee-shirts."
"I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”
Remember this? Helen Thomas reporting in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on October 15, 2003:
President Bush recently gave an hour-long exclusive interview to Fox TV anchor Brit Hume, who tossed him a series of softball questions.How is that strategy working out? Secretary Rice may have read the news coming out of the Gulf Coast in the first days after Katrina, but she wasn't around to brief the President.
Among them, Bush was asked how he gets his news. Answer: He relies on briefings by chief of staff Andrew Card and national security affairs adviser Condoleezza Rice.
He walks into the Oval Office in the morning, Bush said, and asks Card: "What's in the newspapers worth worrying about? I glance at the headlines just to kind of (get) a flavor of what's moving," Bush said. "I rarely read the stories," he said.
Instead, the president continued, he gets "briefed by people who have probably read the news themselves." Rice, on the other hand, is getting the news "directly from the participants on the world stage."
On Wednesday night (Aug.31), Secretary Rice was booed by some audience members at "Spamalot!," the Monty Python musical at the Shubert, when the lights went up after the performance.Well, she's Secretary of State now - her responsibilities lie with international affairs, and this was clearly a domestic situation. So, what with Condi being busy going to shows and shopping, I suppose it fell upon chief of staff Andy Card to brief the President on anything in the news worth worrying about. Wonder how that went?
Yesterday (Thursday, Sept 1) Rice went shopping at Ferragamo on Fifth Ave. According to the Web site www.Gawker.com, the 50-year-old bought "several thousand dollars' worth of shoes" at the pricey leather-goods boutique.
The New York Daily News
September 2, 2005
The president, long reluctant to fire subordinates, came to a belated recognition that his administration was in trouble for the way it had dealt with the disaster, many of his supporters say. One moment of realization occurred on Thursday of last week (Sept. 1) when an aide carried a news agency report from New Orleans into the Oval Office for him to see.The report was about the evacuees at the convention center, some dying and some already dead. Mr. Bush had been briefed that morning by his homeland security secretary, Michael Chertoff, who was getting much of his information from Mr. Brown and was not aware of what was occurring there. The news account was the first that the president and his top advisers had heard not only of the conditions at the convention center but even that there were people there at all.
"He's not a screamer," a senior aide said of the president. But Mr. Bush, angry, directed the White House chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., to find out what was going on.
(emphasis mine)
WASHINGTON, DC—The White House announced today that it does not want the news media to take photographs of incompetent officials in the Bush Administration. The ban would also apply to incompetent acts, say sources close to the White House. Under the new policy, journalists would be barred from photographing FEMA chief Michael Brown, Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff and even President Bush itself. The White House hasn’t said whether all photos of Administration officials will be censored.Read it all . . .
(snip)
Media outlets have been awash in photographs of incompetent officials and their acts in recent days. Cameras have repeatedly zoomed in on Mr. Chertoff appearing aloof and uncaring and Mr. Brown looking ineffectual. Even Mr. Bush has been photographed in less than flattering poses and postures. Thanks to the ban, that will all stop, say sources close to the White House. "You won't see anymore shots of the President strumming a guitar or Chertoff grimacing. This is about treating incompetent officials with the utmost dignity and respect."
Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.Read it all...
FEMA's top three leaders -- Director Michael D. Brown, Chief of Staff Patrick J. Rhode and Deputy Chief of Staff Brooks D. Altshuler -- arrived with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation, according to the agency. Two other senior operational jobs are filled by a former Republican lieutenant governor of Nebraska and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who was once a political operative.
Well, I think if you look at what actually happened, I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, "New Orleans Dodged The Bullet,"
Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff
Meet the Press
September 4, 2005
The headline, of course, in most of the country's papers on Tuesday were "New Orleans dodged a bullet," or words to that effect.
General Richard Myers - Chariman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Defense Department Operational Update Briefing
September 6, 2005
And if you'll remember, all the media reports, or a number of media reports at that time, that Monday -- even all the way to the Tuesday papers, were talking to people and saying that New Orleans had dodged a bullet.I ask again, which newspaper was that?
There were literally reports saying that New Orleans had dodged a bullet
White House Press Secretary Scott Mclellan
Press Briefing
September 9, 2005
Democratic lawmakers weren't satisfied with the move; they immediately demanded Brown's ouster from FEMA.One week ago, President Bush said:
"The events of the last ten days have shown that Mr. Brown has repeatedly exercised poor judgment and has failed in his basic responsibilities," said a letter to Bush from Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sens. Dick Durbin, Debbie Stabenow and Charles E. Schumer. "His continued presence in this critical position endangers the success of the ongoing recovery efforts. ... It is not enough to remove Mr. Brown from the disaster scene."
Republican Sen. Trent Lott, whose Pascagoula, Miss., home was destroyed in the storm, said he, too, had concluded that FEMA "was overwhelmed, undermanned and not capable of doing its job" under Brown's leadership.
"Michael Brown has been acting like a private, instead of a general," Lott said.
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."Again, the AP:
(Secretary of Homeland Security) Chertoff suggested the shift came as the Gulf Coast efforts were entering "a new phase of the recovery operation." He said Brown would return to Washington to oversee the government's response to other potential disasters.I feel better already.
(emphasis mine)
"All of us were just shaking our heads and saying, 'This isn't going to be enough, and the director has to know this isn't going to be enough.' But nothing more seemed to be happening," said Leo Bosner, president of the FEMA Headquarters Employees Union.
Bosner has been with FEMA since it began 26 years ago. He says the agency has been systematically dismantled since it became part of the massive Department of Homeland Security.
(snip)
The union warned Congress in a detailed letter about FEMA's decline a year ago. State emergency managers also warned Capitol Hill and Homeland Security just weeks ago that DHS was too focused on one thing — terrorism.
"We've had almost zero support for a natural disaster and an all-hazards approach," said Eric Holdeman, director of the King County Office of Emergency Management in Washington state. "It's been terrorism only."
Two shaky House incumbents, Democrat Melancon and Republican Boustany, hope response to hurricane rallies voters behind them. House Republican campaign chief Reynolds touts chance to market conservative social-policy solutions; Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."
(emphasis mine)
Crooks and Liars has the video.
Vice President Dick Cheney, in Gulfport, Mississippi on a tour of the Katrina hurricane zone was cursed out as he answered questions from reporters...
Off camera, a protester shouts, "Go fuck yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go fuck yourself." The camera remains on Cheney while we hear scuffling in the background.
