Patridiot Watch posted this hilarious ad from the National Republican Congressional Committee that reminds me of a Keane painting with a “liberalist” dose self-righteousness and jingoism :
If I was a war supporter, this would embarrass the hell out of me. I’m not, so I’ll just laugh instead. (via Shakespeare’s Sister)
An extraordinary appeal to Americans from the Bush administration for money to help pay for the reconstruction of Iraq has raised only $600 (£337), The Observer has learnt. Yet since the appeal was launched earlier this month, donations to rebuild New Orleans have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars.The public’s reluctance to contribute much more than the cost of two iPods to the administration’s attempt to offer citizens ‘a further stake in building a free and prosperous Iraq’ has been seized on by critics as evidence of growing ambivalence over that country.
This coincides with concern over the increasing cost of the war. More than $30 billion has been appropriated for the reconstruction. Initially, America’s overseas aid agency, USaid, expected it to cost taxpayers no more than $1.7bn, but it is now asking the public if they want to contribute even more.
Then again, we’ve already been paying through the roof for the war, so it doesn’t make much sense to contribute more. A lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that this is because chickenhawks’ support stops at their pocketbook, but maybe they all just read the fine print :
It is understood to be the first time that a US government has made an appeal to taxpayers for foreign aid money. Contributors have no way of knowing who will receive their donations or even where they may go, after officials said details had be kept secret for security reasons.
Yeah…”security reasons”. If you’re dumb enough to believe that, I’ve got a war in the Middle East to sell you.
One of the things that always stuns me about seeing these all-too-frequent disasters unfold is how often we’re presented with realizations of “Damn, I hadn’t thought of that.”, which is why exercises like the one discussed in my previous post are so important. Going back through the findings in the report, many things struck me with that feeling, such as the lack of cooperation among government agencies that wouldn’t traditionally consider themselves vital to our national security, like the Evironmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Health and Human Services :
ISSUE – Challenges of a multiple nuclear scenario exercise (Reported by: EPA LNO)DISCUSSION: Having a multiple nuclear release scenario was extremely challenging. In general, both players and scenario writers probably underestimated the tremendous national importance of the Comanche Peak release. A nuclear power plant has never gone beyond “Alert”, so one actually releasing radiation and going to “General Emergency” is extremely significant, as important as Three Mile Island or Chernobyl in the public’s mind. Some of the response personnel left the response operations at the nuclear plant to take care of the nuclear detonation, but this may not necessarily be the way it would play out. Second, the nuclear detonation brings other problems on a national scale that weren’t addressed including additional devices trying to come into the US and perhaps target cities demanding DOE attention that might stress DOE as well as EPA’s response capability.
RECOMMENDATION: The multiple nuclear release scenario allowed for evaluation of (and to varying degrees exposed some confusion about) various federal plans and interagency agreements. This was something that needed to be exercised and had never made it to the forefront until this exercise. EPA , DOE, HHS and other agencies need to better assess their capabilities to respond to multiple nuclear incidents and to better coordinate their roles, resources, and capabilities under existing plans and most importantly, under the final NRP, as it is developed.
RECOMMENDED ACTION OFFICE: Future exercises should include this challenge to enable response agencies to further assess resources needs and better refine their roles in an actual radiological response.
Or who’s in charge of monitoring radioation levels in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.
ISSUE – EPA needs to develop significant new capability if it will be tasked in the future to monitor the public for radiation and to decontaminate significant numbers of people. (Reported by: EPA LNO)DISCUSSION: Population monitoring and decontamination of the public for radiation is not historically seen as an EPA task. During both TOPOFF 2 and UD-04 EPA was given and accepted mission assignments involving monitoring the public. Further, in UD-04 EPA was assigned — and accepted the lead for assisting the State of Texas in the set up and operation of seven decontamination stations capable of handling several thousand people. This has been traditionally thought of as primarily a DOE/HHS-lead activity. EPA needs to do significant work to better prepare response personnel and contractors to perform this type of work if tasked to perform some of these missions in the future. Additionally, resources to do this on a large scale would certainly be an issue.
RECOMMENDATION: Under existing plans, and more importantly, under the new NRP, EPA’s role with respect to public monitoring and public decontamination, should be clarified vis a vis DOE and HHS. If it is agreed that EPA should be prepared for this type of mission, the Agency will need to develop plans, procedures and contractor capability to perform it.
RECOMMENDED ACTION OFFICE: DHS/FEMA should work with EPA, DOE and HHS to codify all three agencies’ respective roles in public monitoring and decontamination. If EPA will be tasked with this work in future, it should begin developing an expanded capability immediately.
Or the challenges in maintaining security clearances in a crisis.
Current disaster operations plans do not include plans for secure communications as part of the standard deployment package. This could be a problem if the event involved a nuclear, biological, radiological or nuclear weapon or other terrorist action. Region VI does not have adequate secure communications to handle the kind of information we would need. Region VI has secure communications only via high-frequency (HF) radio. Region VI does not have secure video-teleconference (VTC) capability. Very few of our information technology staff have security clearances. None of the reservist personnel who staff disaster field offices have security clearances. In a catastrophic emergency, we may be short full-time staff with security clearances. There is also a need for interoperability secure communications between DoD and DHS. The DCE’s “key” failed, and FEMA was unable to recover it for him. The DCE had to drive several hundred miles to Fifth US Army to obtain another key for his STU-capable telephone.[. . .]
ISSUE – Ineffective Exchange of Classified Information. (Reported by: TSA)
DISCUSSION: Significant classified exercise information was posted by USNORTHCOM to SIPRNet web pages, or moved via SIPRNet email, and was inaccessible within the TSA’s Transportation Security Coordination Center – degrading the ability to set overall incident-related priorities. Although TSA expects to have this capability in the future, all supporting and supported agency centers, at every level of government, must also be capable of accessing this system in their Emergency Operations Centers.
RECOMMENDATION: Each agency requires access and the ability to rapidly exchange classified information. Providing connectivity to the SIPRNet offers an obvious means for the rapid exchange of SECRET information. To establish a near-term common joint information capability an effort should be implemented to expedite establishment of SIPRNet accounts to all management agencies that require access to classified information. An established utility could be classified by using the JRIES on the SIPRNet. Regardless of the system to be used, DHS should designate the system that each agency must acquire to ensure an agency-wide capability exists.
Or (this one really gets me) making sure the government has adequate stockpiles of non-traditional supplies like clean clothes.
Victims contaminated by radioactive fallout, chemicals, or biological agents must discard their contaminated clothes at the decontamination station. Decontamination stations will likely run out of clothes to issue in a catastrophic incident. DHS or the states should stockpile disposable clothing, e.g., FEMA could stockpile clothing at Territorial Logistics Centers. Private sector clothing production and distribution centers should be included in an inventory of critical resources.
Considering that the government failed so completely at accomplishing the obvious tasks assigned to them, I’m doubtful that the issues above are on anyone’s radar.
I’m surprised we haven’t heard more about this disaster test :
About a year and a half ago, emergency management teams from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security gathered in Colorado Springs — the same facility where President Bush will monitor Hurricane Rita Saturday — to run an exercise involving a hurricane hitting the Texas Gulf Coast… a mythical Cat 4/5 called “Hurricane Greg.”However, the weeklong exercise in February 2004 is unlikely to be much help to emergency planners since it involved not just a hurricane but a whole series of disasters taking place at the same time.
In a scenario worthy of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie, the following happen over the course of a few days:
a Category 4 Hurricane hits Corpus Christi, Texas, affecting 300,000 people; a radiological leak is reported at the Comanche Peak nuclear reactor in Texas; an improvised nuclear device detonates outside Cotulla, Texas, a tiny pecan- and sweet onion -growing town between San Antonio and Laredo; two additional improvised nuclear devices are detected by the Coast Guard on a ship approaching the United States; an “eco-terrorist” group blows up a cruise ship in Juneau harbor; two airliners, one off the west coast, one off the east coast of Canada, are hijacked. The after-action report for the exercise…states that the exercise was unrealistic because so many events were piled on top of each other.
In other words “we screwed up the test, but only because you made it too hard.” The last month shows us that a much more focused test would be equally bungled. Great job, Brownie.
The post from the NBC blog links to this PDF of the exercise summary report. Some the the findings are very troubling :
ISSUE – Protective Action Recommendation Timeliness (Reported by: NRC)
DISCUSSION: It was not clear that a coordinated and timely Federal recommendation was made for protective actions following the Cotulla nuclear detonation. Although sheltering direction was made by the State shortly after the event, Federal advice regarding evacuation, sheltering & responder access to potentially contaminated areas remained unsettled for several hours after the incident.RECOMMENDATION: Evaluate methods to improve timeliness and reliability of State & Federal Protective Action Recommendations.
RECOMMENDED ACTION OFFICE: FEMA and Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness
ISSUE – There remains a great deal of uncertainty with regard to “who is in charge”. (Reported by: USNORTHCOM LNO Team)
DISCUSSION: Various USNORTHCOM officials throughout the exercise raised questions on which federal agency is the lead (FEMA, FBI, EPA, DOE, etc). There was continual confusion and concern about roles of the PFO and the lead Federal agency (LFA) for various key functions.RECOMMENDATION: Increase awareness and educate the Federal community, especially the defense community, about the key components and players in the new National Response Plan and related DHS documents.
RECOMMENDED ACTION OFFICE: DHS LNOs at USNORTHCOM, FEMA EMI, and NC J-7.
ISSUE – DHS does not have adequate plans and associated procedures to optimally direct operations during a catastrophic emergency. (Reported by: FEMA)
DISCUSSION: The Federal Response Plan and early versions of a National Response Plan provide very good guidance for how FEMA and the federal government should organize for emergency response. While the organization and description of relationships between agencies is clear, both plans fall short of giving guidance on how to respond.
[. . .]
RECOMMENDATION: The NRP should contain guidance and procedures, for typespecific response for certain weapons of mass destruction and for other extraordinary situations, especially those that require specific application of current and emerging technologies. The NRP should include all sources and protocols for obtaining information, assets and operational support from a wide-variety of sources.RECOMMENDED ACTION OFFICE: FEMA
ISSUE – DHS does not have adequate information management capabilities or plans to support response operations following a catastrophic event. DHS doesn’t have comprehensive information collection, handling, analysis or dissemination plans that enable the flow of information during emergency operations. (Reported by: FEMA)
DISCUSSION: The inability to quickly gather, analyze and easily share real-time information between partner departments and agencies involved in the response operations due to the lack of a comprehensive information management system due to lack of plans, processes and protocols is further degraded by hardware issues. Each of our partners brings its parochial software and hardware because of its own internal operational requirements; it also brings its own firewalls that prohibit “outsiders” from entering. We found a year ago, during the Shuttle Columbia response, that important operational information could not be easily shared between FEMA, NASA and EPA without the cobbling together of a separate, localized network outside all firewalls. There are a variety of other “information” issues that, if addressed, would facilitate in the operational response.
[. . .]RECOMMENDATION: Develop a detailed information-management plan as an annex to the National Response Plan. The plan should address standard hardware components, software, data structures, hardware configurations, and interoperable policies that would enable the federal response organization to share information and resources.
Additionally, FEMA should develop a plan to allow our federal and state counterparts to easily connect and share information with FEMA and their home organizations through the FEMA network; or, work with NRP agencies to set up an alternate emergency network that separates disaster-related connections from day-to-day systems.
RECOMMENDED ACTION OFFICE: I-STAFF in coordination with FEMA
Since FEMA and the DHS completely failed at the tasks outlined in the report a year and a half ago, perhaps the mainstream media can pick up the ball and run with it. Since the White House is patting itself on the back right now, I’d love to see a progress report on how far along they are on interagency communications, refinement of the National Response Plan (NRP), procedures for requesting resources from the Department of Defense, etc…
Here are two of the top stories on Yahoo right now. The first describes steps taken by the feds to prepare for Hurricane Rita :
The government already had moved some emergency medical supplies to Texas, but Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt declared a public health emergency to ease some of the requirements for hurricane victims who seek Medicaid or other assistance after the storm, a spokesman said.“I think at this point, the federal government has done pretty much all that’s possible to do,” said Federal Emergency Management Agency acting director R. David Paulison. “Right now, we just have to wait out the storm, see exactly where it makes landfall, and then move ahead in with the supplies we have on the ground, our resources.”
…and the second concerns, well, you can see for yourself :
Wilma Skinner would like to scream at the officials of this city. If only they would pick up their phones.“I done called for a shelter, I done called for help. There ain’t none. No one answers,” she said, standing in blistering heat outside a check-cashing store that had just run out of its main commodity. “Everyone just says, ‘Get out, get out.’ I’ve got no way of getting out. And now I’ve got no money.”
With Hurricane Rita breathing down Houston’s neck, those with cars were stuck in gridlock trying to get out. Those like Skinner — poor, and with a broken-down car — were simply stuck, and fuming at being abandoned, they say.
“All the banks are closed and I just got off work,” said Thomas Visor, holding his sweaty paycheck as he, too, tried to get inside the store, where more than 100 people, all of them black or Hispanic, fretted in line. “This is crazy. How are you supposed to evacuate a hurricane if you don’t have money? Answer me that?”
What do expect from the people who didn’t know about the refugee crisis in the Superdome until they were asked about it on the air. Don’t worry, poor Texans. Assuming you survive through the weekend, you can count on the government to set you up in the cheapest trailer park Halliburton can build.
No, I’m not talking about the President’s drinking problem, I’m talking about his tendency to link everything to 9/11. (via Americablog)
Mr. Bush said he had been “thinking a lot” about the comparisons between the response to the attacks in New York and Washington, and the storm devastation. “We look at the destruction caused by Katrina, and our hearts break,” he said. Turning the subject to terrorists, he said: “They’re the kind of people who look at Katrina and wish they had caused it. We’re in a war against these people.”
Ahem, I’m going to take a deep breath and try to ignore the fact that reading the last paragraph just gave me a stomach ache. Now lemme try to address this without resorting to profanity….okay, here we go…
Mr. President, how would things be different if the flooding in New Orleans had been caused by a van full explosives parked next to one of the more than 300 miles of unguarded levees?[1]We can assume that if it were the work of one of our homegrown right-wing terrorists like Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph, the “war against these people” talk would morph into talk about “bad apples” and all that, but that’s something for another post… We don’t expect you to stop hurricanes from happening, but we do expect you to do everything you can to stop terrorists. Now I suppose you could point to the fact that there haven’t been any major terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11[2]A rhetorical trick which also would have worked well on 9/10/01., but preventing disasters from happening is only part of the job. Besides, to change the subject back from terrorism to Katrina, you screwed up there too.
Moving beyond that, the causes of the disaster are mostly irrelevant when it comes to emergency management[3]That’s why FEMA was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in the first place., which is why the moment the flooding began, the government should have jumped into the full-scale disaster scenario that you were supposed to be preparing over the last four years. Hell, with a terrorist attack you’ve at least got the element of surprise card to play in this little blame game. In this case, you had a week to prepare and still screwed up.
So go ahead and link Katrina to 9/11. It just makes you look like a bigger failure.
2 : A rhetorical trick which also would have worked well on 9/10/01.
3 : That’s why FEMA was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in the first place.
Following Amanda’s lead, I’d like to join in shining a flashlight into the dark corners of this site’s readership and see what comes scurrying out. If you’re a lurker, post a one-time comment and tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? Do you have a blog or an online magazine? Are there any posts here that you hated or loved but didn’t say so at the time? Are there any issues you wish I’d cover more?
UPDATE : Speaking of blogosphere memes, PZ’s got one that sparked my interest :
Rules:1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
Going all the way back to March 28, 2003, my sentence is :
The answer to this is that the Democrats need to come up with as many buzzwords as possible and disseminate them among themselves.
Please don’t read the rest of the post. The writing is okay, but my suggestions are shitty enough to make George Lakoff cringe. Uggh..
…and you thought I was kidding with this post. Here’s an actual map from the National Hurricane Center. (via C&L)
Operation “blame NOLA on environmentalists” is starting to bear some fruit. That is, if you believe the right-wing blogosphere, who’s all too eager to hype this bit from a recent NY Times article on the levy breaks :
A surge from Lake Pontchartrain was the catastrophic situation that the corps had been guarding against since Hurricane Betsy 40 years ago. Initially, the corps wanted to build a giant barrier to keep water from the Gulf of Mexico from reaching Lake Pontchartrain and flooding the canals.That project was delayed by lawsuits from environmental groups that contended the corps had failed to study ecological effects. By the late 1970′s, the corps abandoned that approach and began raising levees along the lake and the Mississippi and adding flood walls on the canals.
Is the Times burying the lede here? Well, only if you ignore this…
As a result of federal budget constraints, the walls were never tested for their ability to withstand the cascades of lake water that rushed up to, or over, their tops as storm waves pulsed through the canals on Aug. 29, corps and local officials say.Hurricane Katrina was the first serious test of the flood walls, said Stevan Spencer, chief engineer for the Orleans Levee District, and it “just overwhelmed the system.”
…this…
Other questions surround the walls’ design, known as an “I-wall” for its slim cross section that fits easily into densely developed areas.The corps manual for flood control construction suggests a different design for walls higher than seven feet – walls shaped like an inverted T, with the horizontal section buried in the dirt for extra stability.
But that option was never considered, corps engineers said, because “T walls” were more expensive, required a broad base of dense soil for support and were not necessarily stronger.
…and this from the same article.
The corps and local levee authorities also never tested whether the chosen I-wall design could survive if water flowed over the top and cascaded onto dirt embankments below.Corps officials said they were proscribed from considering stronger wall designs for the canals both by the tight quarters and by federal law, which requires that they seek and study only the level of flood control authorized by Congress.
“Our hands are tied as to looking at higher-level events,” Mr. Naomi said.
All of which point to the same conclusion : The feds were unwilling to shell out enough money. I think we can all agree that testing the strength of the existing levees, making sure the levees are build to spec, and researching alternative solutions are all essential parts of a proper construction effort, but these steps are all expensive. When the flow of cash dries up the way it has since Bush took office, people start cutting corners, skipping crucial steps, and having to decide whether to do a half-assed job on the entire project or a thorough job on a project whose goals have been seriously scaled back. We won’t know the truth behind those questions until this tragedy is fully investigated, but we already know the result of those decisions :
The last time God attacked those sinners on the Gulf coast, he made the storm look like a giant fetus[1]Personally, I don’t see it, but I never saw the word “SEX” on Ritz crackers or understood John Lennon’s obsession with the phrase “turn me on, dead man” either. :
2 : To be fair, it could be also punishment for the equal rights amendment, universal suffrage, hippy chicks who don’t shave their legs, Billie Jean King beating Bobby Riggs, birth control, or women who wear pants.
Sorry for the long quote, but John Edwards has also spoken out on the Katrina aftermath and it’s incredible. It really is time for a “working society”.
So many young people are struggling against the odds to do right, and they need America’s support. Words are not enough. That’s why it is time for a new social compact. When President Bush talks about an “ownership society,” he means the more you own, the more you get. For most Americans, his approach is the more you work, the more you pay and the less you make.Where I come from, what matters the most isn’t how much you have, it’s how much you give. Work gives pride, dignity, and hope to our lives and our communities. And so the President is wrong: America is not, and never wished to be, a Wealth Society.
To be true to our values, our country must build a Working Society – an America where everyone who works hard finally has the rewards to show for it. In the Working Society, nobody who works full-time should have to raise children in poverty, or in fear that one health emergency or pink slip will drive them over the cliff.
In the Working Society, everyone who works full-time will at last have something to show for it – a home of their own, an account where their savings and paycheck can grow.
In the Working Society, everyone willing to work will have the chance to get ahead. Anyone who wants to go to college and work will be able to go the first year for free.
In the Working Society, people who work have the right to live in communities where the streets are safe, the schools are good, and jobs can be reached.
In the Working Society, everyone will also be asked to hold up their end of the bargain – to work, to hold off having kids until they’re ready, and to do their part for their kids when the time comes.
The first test of the working society will be in the Gulf. And the central principle of our effort should be the one I just outlined: We can only renew the Gulf if we renew the lives of the Gulf’s people by encouraging and honoring work.
The President doesn’t get that. At a time when a million people have been displaced, many already poor before the storm; when the only shot many people have is a good job rebuilding New Orleans, the President intervened to suspend prevailing wage laws so his contractor friends can cut wages for a hard day’s work.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the President never suggested cutting million-dollar salaries for the heads of Halliburton or the other companies profiting from these contracts. A President who never met an earmark he wouldn’t approve or a millionaire tax cut he wouldn’t promote decided to slash wages for the least of us.
Seventy-five years ago, our government was led by a President who actually succeeded in navigating America through a disaster. Faced with the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt saw that relief requires more than food and shelter; it requires the dignity that comes from a job at a decent wage. And he saw something else: as Allida Black put it at a forum here last week, we have to “build to last.”
Many of our children still go to schools that the WPA constructed; many of our homes are lighted because of dams that the PWA built; many of our families still hike on trails that his CCC blazed. That’s why trailer parks are not the answer.
In fact, if we know anything from a half century of urban development, it is that concentrating poor people close to each other and away from jobs is a lousy idea. If the Great Depression brought forth Hoovervilles, these trailer towns may someday be known as Bushvilles.
Heh. That reminds me of a cartoon from last year…
Disturbing evacuee tale from NPR correspondent Farai Chideya (via BoingBoing) :
My Uncle Israel Chideya was missing for a while, lost in the maelstrom of post-Katrina evacuations from New Orleans. Well, we found him. He is good…and mad.Here’s just a snippet of what he told me.
He had bought a multi-unit apartment complex in the french quarter. He didn’t evauate for the hurricane, but did once the levee broke and the floodwaters started rising. He and twenty thousand other folks ended up at the convention center, and he spent five datys in the place where (like the Superdome) children were raped, people were murdered, and even the elderly were harassed. “Elderly people from nursing homes were dumped at the Convention Center in their diapers.”
. . .
Uncle Israel took two elderly couples under his wing. One couple was blind. He shephereded them through the evacuation. They were taken by bus to Baton Rouge, then loaded onto military transport planes at the airport.
They werent told where they were going, but ended up in San Antonio, Texas. They were taken to the coliseum and the American Center, all of the evacuees. My uncle was worried about a repeat of the Convention Center fiasco. And then he noticed something. “All of a sudden we don’t see any white people,” he said. All of the white evacuees had mysteriously disappeared.
He asked a volunteering priest what had happened. The priest told him that local hotels were being paid to take evacuees. The white evacuees were told about the hotels. The black ones, says my uncle, were not.
Sick.
John Kerry reminds me why I voted for him :
Natural and human calamity stripped away the spin machine, creating a rare accountability moment, not just for the Bush administration, but for all of us to take stock of the direction of our country and do what we can to reverse it. That’s our job — to turn this moment from a frenzied expression of guilt into a national reversal of direction. Some try to minimize the moment by labeling it a “blame game” — but as I’ve said – this is no game and what is at stake is much larger than the incompetent and negligent response to Katrina.This is about the broader pattern of incompetence and negligence that Katrina exposed, and beyond that, a truly systemic effort to distort and disable the people’s government, and devote it to the interests of the privileged and the powerful. It is about the betrayal of trust and abuse of power. And in all the often horrible and sometimes ennobling sights and sounds we’ve all witnessed over the last two weeks, there’s another sound just under the surface: the steady clucking of Administration chickens coming home to roost.
. . .And the rush now to camouflage their misjudgments and inaction with money doesn’t mean they are suddenly listening. It’s still politics as usual. The plan they’re designing for the Gulf Coast turns the region into a vast laboratory for right wing ideological experiments. They’re already talking about private school vouchers, abandonment of environmental regulations, abolition of wage standards, subsidies for big industries – and believe it or not yet another big round of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us!
. . .
Katrina is a symbol of all this administration does and doesn’t do. Michael Brown — or Brownie as the President so famously thanked him for doing a heck of a job – Brownie is to Katrina what Paul Bremer is to peace in Iraq; what George Tenet is to slam dunk intelligence; what Paul Wolfowitz is to parades paved with flowers in Baghdad; what Dick Cheney is to visionary energy policy; what Donald Rumsfeld is to basic war planning; what Tom Delay is to ethics; and what George Bush is to “Mission Accomplished” and “Wanted Dead or Alive.” The bottom line is simple: The “we’ll do whatever it takes” administration doesn’t have what it takes to get the job done.This is the Katrina administration.
There’s a lot more.
Billmon and others have pointed to this article in the Times and congratulating the Dems for growing a pair (a sentiment I 100% agree with), but forgive me for raining on the parade. [emphasis added]
Congressional Republicans signaled today that they have abandoned their plan to conduct a joint House-Senate probe of the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina.In announcing a joint probe this month, the Republican leadership had said it would be the most efficient way to investigate the administration’s much-criticized initial response to the hurricane. But today, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) conceded that he could not overcome Democratic opposition to a joint investigation.
The Democratic leadership has refused to appoint members to a joint committee, citing the lack of equal representation of Democrats on the panel, and the lack of power to issue subpoenas that the majority opposed. Democrats also have insisted on an independent inquiry.
Democratic opposition has left Republicans little maneuvering room for mounting a credible probe. With the joint investigation apparently off the table, Republicans can only hope that Democrats will participate in each chamber’s separate investigation. It was far from clear today that Democrats would do that.
Did the writer at the Times not even read the sentence she typed immediately preceeding the one I highlighted or does a non-partisan, independent inquiry not “credible” enough? I’m glad the Democrats played hardball here, but the conventional wisdom is in danger of forming around that old “Democrats are obstructionists” canard.
I didn’t catch more than a couple hours, but I got a pretty good idea last week that John Roberts hearings were boring. Not only for the fact that his confirmation is a foregone conclusion and that he, predictably, refused to answer almost every question, but because the proceedings themselves were a total sham :
You would never know, if you sat through today’s proceedings, that there’s a war on. You would never know, if you were here, that the country is barely beginning to heal from the national wound that is Katrina. If you were a visiting alien, covering the Roberts confirmation, you could not be faulted for believing that the single biggest burning constitutional issue facing the federal judiciary is whether Ruth Bader Ginsburg answered substantive questions at her own hearings. More airtime goes to Ginsburg—she who “refused to answer nearly 60 questions,” according to Orrin Hatch, R-Utah—than to the extraordinary grant of executive-branch wartime powers in the 2005 opinion Roberts joined in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. In fact, I count exactly one senator (Dick Durbin, D-Ill.) who devotes more than a single sentence to the issue.That’s because today’s hearings are not about the candidate. They are about the majesty and superiority of the Senate. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., describes these proceedings as a “job interview with the American people.” But in what solar system would a four-day job interview include a solid day in which the interviewer talks about himself?
. . .
It is an immutable rule of nature that every sadist needs a masochist, every leader needs a follower, and every addict needs an enabler. So, too, every egomaniac needs someone humble, and that’s why, in the end, these hearings are so perfectly matched. Roberts wants to say little and literally fade to black. The senators want to give speeches and seize the limelight. It’s a match made in heaven. It’s just the watching it that’s hell.
The Dems in the judiciary committee knew they didn’t stand a chance, so they took the opportunity to play up the theatrics. It’s not that they weren’t trying to get answers, it just that it all seemed sorta choreographed. Everybody knew the conclusion of this before the hearings even started.
Besides, the Roberts confirmation is a battle we lost last year. If having a wolf in sheep’s clothing put in charge of the legislative branch of the government is what it takes to get people to finally realize that their votes have consequences, then so be it. If he’s even half as moderate as he pretends to be, then I’d consider it a victory.
