be the change you want to see in the world

As CNN’s website trumpets the general sense of shock sweeping America right now at the feeble resonse to Kartina’s aftermath, those on the ground literally dying for aid are lucky they don’t have any real connections to civilisation. If they did, they might catch wind of supreme asshole Michael Brown of FEMA telling them they are responsible for their own situation:

Michael Brown also agreed with other public officials that the death toll in the city could reach into the thousands.

“Unfortunately, that’s going to be attributable a lot to people who did not heed the advance warnings,” Brown told CNN.

“I don’t make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans,” he said.

“And to find people still there is just heart-wrenching to me because, you know, the mayor did everything he could to get them out of there.

“So, we’ve got to figure out some way to convince people that whenever warnings go out it’s for their own good,” Brown said. “Now, I don’t want to second guess why they did that. My job now is to get relief to them.”

I think it is quite amazing that the majority of New Orleans citizens managed to evacuate the city with one day’s notice. I can’t recall if any assistance was offered to people with no way to actually do so, but that will all come out in writing of this tragedy.

If Michael Brown wants to know why some pople didn’t evacuate, the answers are many and quite obvious:

Despite the dire predictions, a group of residents in a poor neighborhood of central New Orleans sat on a porch with no car, no way out and, surprisingly, no fear.

“We’re not evacuating,” said Julie Paul, 57. “None of us have any place to go. We’re counting on the Superdome. That’s our lifesaver.”

The 70,000-seat Superdome, the home of football’s Saints, opened at daybreak Sunday, giving first priority to frail, elderly people on walkers, some with oxygen tanks. They were told to bring enough food, water and medicine to last up to five days.

“They told us not to stay in our houses because it wasn’t safe,” said Victoria Young, 76, who sat amid plastic bags and a metal walker. “It’s not safe anywhere when you’re in the shape we’re in.”

There you have it Michael. Unless you offered to drive these people out of New Orleans yourself, then you should just STFU and do your job.

Hurricane Katrina

In pro wrestling the bad guy usually gets down on his knees at some point, begging the good guy to stop beating on him. The good guy, being good, usually relents, only to be sandbagged by the bad guy as soon as he lets down his guard.

Politics is like that as well. When one politician is saying “don’t play politics” with an issue or event, it usually means that politician is vulnerable and hasn’t come up with a strategy.

The strategy only works when political commentary can be rightly construed as gaming. The Katrina situation is no game, and Bush cannot escape criticism for real and devastating decisions taken by his administration that directly impacted the outcome of Katrina’s landfall.

The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night observed, “The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana’s coast, only to be opposed by the White House. … In its budget, the Bush administration proposed a significant reduction in funding for southeast Louisiana’s chief hurricane protection project. Bush proposed $10.4 million, a sixth of what local officials say they need.”

This is a very complex story of betrayal. Betrayal of half a million Americans living in direct threat of a hurricane-related catastrophe that has now been realized. The tax cuts and Iraq-related budgetary redirections have now come home to roost.

So it is not “playing” politics to insist that Bush be immediately and relentlessly held to account for his direct failings with regard to the Katrina disaster. It is simply good politics. Politics in the interest of America. Politics that aims to right wrongs and prevent further neglect and catastrophe.

It is “playing” politics to simply lie to the American people about what engineers had been telling the whitehouse for years. Bush said on Monday:

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did appreciate a serious storm but these levees got breached and as a result much of New Orleans is flooded and now we’re having to deal with it and will,” he said.

Holy shit. This is just about as good as Clinton’s “what the meaning of the word is is”. Bush will say he was talking about breaching (i.e. breaking) the levees, not topping them. Now that’s playing politics. And that’s disgraceful.

Hurricane Katrina