In Nightmares Begin Responsibility

Nightmares: Bush failures during Katrina.

K: NorthCom started planning before the storm even hit.

We were ready for the storm when it hit Florida because, as you remember, it crossed the bottom part of Florida, and then we were plaining, you know, once it was pointed towards the Gulf Coast.

So what we did was we activated what we call defense coordinating officers to work with the state to say okay, what do you think you'll need, and we set up staging bases that could be started. We had the USS Baton sailing almost behind the hurricane so that after the hurricane made landfall it's search and rescue helicopters would be available almost immediately. So we had things ready.

The only caveat is, we have to wait until the President authorizes us to do so. The laws of the United States say that the military can't just act in this fashion, we have to wait for the President to give us permission.


U.S. Xpress driver from Chattanooga, TN, fills water truck on Monday. FEMA does not permit driver to enter New Orleans until Friday.

About 100 people have died at the Chalmette Slip after being pulled off their rooftops, waiting to be ferried up the river to the West Bank and bused out of the flood ravaged area, U.S. Rep. Charles Melancon, D-Napoleonville, said Thursday.

About 1,500 people were at the slip on Thursday afternoon, where critical supplies like food and water are scarce, he said. Melancon expressed serious frustration with the slow pace of getting these items to the people waiting to finish their journey to
safety.

In St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, just south of New Orleans, victims of the hurricane are still waiting for food and water and for buses to escape the floodwaters, Melancon said. And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.

“I thank the president for his visit today, but it was more show than substance,” Melancon said. “Frankly, we needed action days ago.”

Bubble Boy's Boys to Poor: DROP DEAD

A bevy of beer-bellied, back-slapping white boys surround a still-smirking Bubble Boy, as they glad-hand, and slap-five and do nothing. FEMA director and political appointee, Arabian-horse-addict Michael Brown, whose responsibility it is to distribute aid and manage emergency situations is apparently just as incompetent as his boss. Ditto Ming The Merciless Uber-Doppleganger & Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff: he's supposed to be handling major incidents? Handling? As in what? This is just the same as the aftermath of a terror attack, and all he can offer is more blather?

Message from Bubble Boy's boys to the poor: DROP DEAD.

And, they are.

Even the constant drone of Rovian spin is beginning to wear thin on the networks: it's fine, we're doin' all we can, help is on the way, it's hard work, hard work, freedom's on the march . . .

Yeah, right. We can see the bodies floating in fetid water, we can see the corpses covered up in wheelchairs, we can see patients begging for insulin, we can hear doctors and nurses begging for protection. We can hear of roving bands of well-armed (thanks, Wal-Mart!) warlords roaming around the Bush-made New Somalia of New Orleans.

And the Army would be--where? And the National Guard would be--where?

Oh, right. I-rack.

You betcha.

Mayor Nagin, until recently a Republican, says:

"They don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn -- excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed...

This is a national disaster. Get every doggone Greyhound bus line in the country and get their asses moving to New Orleans...

We're getting reports and calls that are breaking my heart, from people saying, "I've been in my attic. I can't take it anymore. The water is up to my neck. I don't think I can hold out." And that's happening as we speak...

Then they told me that they went overnight, and they built 17 concrete structures and they had the pulleys on them and they were going to drop them.

I flew over that thing yesterday, and it's in the same shape that it was after the storm hit. There is nothing happening. And they're feeding the public a line of bull and they're spinning, and people are dying down here."

Forty thousand National Guard troops were needed there on Monday and Tuesday, and forty thousand National Guard troops are not in New Orleans yet. A massive helicopter food and water drop was needed there on Monday and Tuesday, and is not there yet.

It's like those Yellow Elephant fat guys in Crawford screaming at Cindy Sheehan: WE DON'T CARE! WE DON'T CARE! WE DON'T CARE!

And--they don't. What a surprise. From Condi spending her time stocking up on more three-thousand-dollar Ferragamos to Bubble Boy looking annoyed and bored as he's forced YET AGAIN to mouthe heh-heh-heh helpful platitudes and pat his useless buddies on the back.

"I don't think anyone anticipated a breach of the levees."

You didn't? You knew enough to cut funds for breach prevention. Moron. Swine.

Bush AND Chertoff was briefed about the likely breach--but now they've forgotten that briefing ever happened? Having a conveniently-timed Alzheimer's moment? Too bad for them the briefing was caught on tape. Oops.

Why couldn't Bubble Boy load up Airforce One with evacuees? Gore sent a plane. Guess he IS the real president, 'cause he's the only one of the two acting presidential.

Oh, wait. Maybe we should hold up whatever supplies we do have, and wait until Bubble Boy comes by for a photo-op. If a couple of poor sick people, or sick poor people, die in the meantime, that's just social Darwinism, which in any case we don't believe in, we believe in Intelligent Design, screw Darwin, so that'll be ok. Yeah. Let's set up another photo op. See, help is on the way. It's hard work. Sorry if you're dead already. It's your own damn fault. Poor people are poor because they're lazy.

Here's another question: on TV tonight, they interviewed a FEMA trucker bringing in water who works for U.S. Xpress, based in Chattanooga, TN. Now, besides the obvious question of why one is going ALL the way to Chattanooga for water, there is this gentleman's comment: he said he had loaded up with water on MONDAY, but "his bosses," uh, that would be FEMA, kept him OUT of New Orleans until FRIDAY.

Hel-lo? What's going ON here? Why are essential supplies being deliberately withheld from dying Americans?

Why is this pitiful excuse of a president good for nothing but clearing brush?

Which is worse, Bubble Boy bringing us into fiscal bankruptcy? Or moral bankruptcy?

Lake George counts in both columns.

Bubble Boy Deja Vu--MIA All Over Again!!

On Monday before Hurricane Katrina, Boy George, Dirty Bush, just had to go to Rancho Cucamonga. On Tuesday, after the hurricane, he had to go to San Diego.

On both days, he had to not go to New Orleans.

That's 'cause Bubble Boy's trying to complete this five-week lap of a tough, compulsory, multiple-vacation-per-year performance schedule. Having vacations is--well, it's hard work.

I mean, it's hard trying to forget about Cindy Sheehan. It's hard trying to forget about having successfully created an Islamic State. It's hard going to barbeques filled with Fourth Estate Propaganda Stenographers, and it's real hard clearin' that brush.

It's hard trying to pump some empathy out of a charred, black heart. Pumpin' oil out of that charred, black heart, that might work, mm-hm.

It's just SO parallel with the tsunami thing, Bubble Boy's total utter lack of empathy thing.

When there was that tsunami thing, there was that stunning lack-of-any-empathic-sympathy-thing thing.

Remember that? Hundreds of thousands dead, and Bush responds as if he were popping a zit or adjusting his jock strap. Took his handlers three, four days to beat some pretense of empathy into him, and it didn't really take, did it?

With the Hurricane Katrina disaster, Bubble Boy Bush's response once again is--disaster.

Mr. President Heart-of-Darkness is, empathetically speaking, Missing in Action, once again.

Does Bubble Boy feel guilty for having sent all those National Guard people away from their state into the deserts of Iraq? Nah.

Does he feel guilty for having slashed FEMA funding to protect New Orleans from disasters just like the one that just happened? Nah.

Does he think going back to Washington will make him look like he's leaderish? Sorta, but mostly Bubble Boy desperately needed an excuse permanently to end his miserable 2005 Crawford vacation and make Cindy Sheehan and her Cindy-Sheehan-thing thing GO AWAY.

Bubble Boy said it at Harvard, his professor Professor Tsurumi, recalled it, and here it is: poor people are poor because they're lazy.

Wooh-hooh!

If they die because they're poor and therefore lack cars, money, resources, highground property, etc., in order to escape hurricanes like in New Orleans and Mississippi, it's their own damn fault, mm-hm.

Hey. Don't get all snivelly-liberal about it, dudes and dudettes. GOD smote the poor in New Orleans, not Bubble Boy. So don't expect Bubble Boy to feel bad about it.

Our Bubble Boy?

Shee-it. Nah. He don' feel bad about nothin'.