Political Bloviation

George McGovern lays out a powerful argument for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney:
Why I Believe Bush Must Go – washingtonpost.com
Bush and Cheney are clearly guilty of numerous impeachable offenses. They have repeatedly violated the Constitution. They have transgressed national and international law. They have lied to the American people time after time. Their [...]

Daily Kos: What Did You Expect, America?
Over on Daily Kos, SusanG clearly articulates exactly what I’ve been trying to say for a while:
If you put people in charge of running a project they are ideologically committed to proving a failure, it will fail.
That neatly explains a host of failures by the Bush administration, Katrina, Iraq, [...]

US House clears $427.6 billion for Pentagon – Yahoo! News
Voting 219-207 largely along party lines, the House defeated an amendment to make the National Security Agency obtain warrants before listening to the international phone calls and reading the e-mails of U.S. citizens.
I guess it’s clear which party favors judicial oversight and which party favors unfettered [...]

Video Shows Bush Warned Before Katrina Hit – Yahoo! News
WASHINGTON – On the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s fateful landfall,
President Bush was confident. His homeland security chief appeared relaxed. And warnings of the coming destruction — breached or overrun levees, deaths at the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelming needs for post-storm rescues — were delivered in [...]

Chertoff Defends DHS Response to Natural Disasters
“I reject outright any suggestion that President Bush was anything less than fully involved,” Townsend said. “The president knew full well the danger of the storm.”
That’s a marvelous defense of the President’s ignoring events on the Gulf Coast. He knew about but didn’t do anything anyway? Brilliant, simply brilliant.

Lawmakers Prepare Plans to Finance Storm Relief – New York Times
Suggestions for paying for it include:

eliminating $25 billion in projects from the newly enacted transportation measure.
Good luck with getting congressmen to go along with giving up their favorite pork projects back home.

Mr. Bush in New Orleans – New York Times
Read it. I wish I were as coherent and cogent.

I watched the President’s speech on CNN International from my Manila hotel room. I have a few observations. First I thought the plan to build New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast were good. The Pres. talked about fighting poverty and the roots of racism. Looks like, at least for those along the [...]

To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility,” Bush said.

After Days of Criticism, Emergency Director Resigns – New York Times
In contrast to Mr. Brown, who had relatively little experience dealing with disasters and emergency response before joining FEMA, Mr. Paulison has spent his career in the field, having been chief of the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Department before joining the federal government in 2001 as [...]

Casualty of Firestorm: Outrage, Bush and FEMA Chief – New York Times
In apparent responce to massive cluelessness Mike Brown has been sent packing. While Dubya should have clearly fired the dolt, at least he got him out of the way. I guess when your as dumb as a rock, someone like “Brownie” looks competent.

Advance Men in Charge – New York Times
Duh! An amazing grasp of the obvious from the NY Times op-ed page:
Katrina has proved that federal disaster help is vital, and that Mr. Brown and his team of advance men can’t do the job. What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about [...]

CNN.com – Cheney, Gonzales tour disaster area – Sep 8, 2005
GULFPORT, Mississippi (AP) — Walking a hurricane-riddled street, Vice President Dick Cheney declared Thursday that much progress is being made in a disaster relief effort he termed “very impressive.”
You have to wonder, exactly WTF VP “I’m a Dick” Cheney is talking about? The White House [...]

CNN.com – Teams removing 30 bodies found in nursing home – Sep 8, 2005
Rodriguez said state and federal aid was slow in coming, and that his parish made it through the early days with the help of sheriffs from other states, a contingent of 50 Royal Canadian Mounted Police and other first responders.
Strange how Canadian [...]

FEMA Chief Waited Until After Storm Hit – Yahoo! News
The government’s disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000
Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.
Michael Brown, director of the
Federal Emergency Management [...]

Republicans say hurricane won’t stop budget cuts – Yahoo! News
Republicans in Congress on Wednesday rejected calls by Democrats to suspend work on tax cuts, that would mainly benefit the rich, and spending reductions on social programs because of the huge costs of hurricane relief.
Not like we need the money for a war or a major [...]

This will be my last post about Katrina and NOLA for a while. It’s becoming more than I can bear.
Critical Condition – Newsweek Hurricane Katrina Coverage – MSNBC.com
Critical Condition
The Health Crisis: Contaminated water. Dysfunctional hospitals. The city’s medical challenge is just beginning.
I’ve spent the last several days reading a lot and writing a bit about [...]

Crooks and Liars
Crook and liars has a quote, along with a link to the video of Bob Shieffer’s commentary on the response to Katrina:
Finally, a personal thought. We have come through what may have been one of the worst weeks in America’s history, a week in which government at every level failed the people it [...]

After Failures, Government Officials Play Blame Game – New York Times
Whatever happened to the pro-states’ rights stance of conservatives? Sounds like they’ve been trampling local authority in a major way.
Far from deferring to state or local officials, FEMA asserted its authority and made things worse, Mr. Broussard complained on “Meet the Press.”
When Wal-Mart sent three [...]

As White House Anxiety Grows, Bush Tries to Quell Political Crisis – New York Times
Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, the Republican whip, said it would be a mistake to abandon efforts to reduce the estate tax, arguing that was precisely what the economy needed to grow. But he said he thought the White House might [...]