Print the legend. At Fact-esque, eRobin catches David Sanger of the Times doing what his paper calls "news analysis," and the rest of the world calls "fluffing":

[President Bush] prides himself as a crisis manager. He observed in a debate with Vice President Al Gore in 2000 that natural catastrophes were "a time to test your mettle."

The next few weeks will determine whether he can manage several challenges at once, in the chaos of Iraq and the humanitarian and economic fallout along the Gulf Coast. ...

"If anyone is telling you that Iraq is getting in the way, well that's hogwash," [Bush's ex-FEMA director Joe] Allbaugh said from Baton Rouge, where he was clinging to a bad cellphone connection while trying to help muster private industry to aid in the disaster relief.

David Sanger is, of course, paid at least in part for his skill plying the heroic myth. "Clinging" is especially good—the storm is passed, but the second and greater storm, the storm of helping, is still being braved by Bush's loyal retainers. Loyal, even unto their private post-government lobbying practices.

Would it be churlish to wonder just what kind of "mustering" Joe Allbaugh (whose qualifications for directing the nation's disaster preparedness system included his managing Bush's gubernatorial campaign in 1994, as well as serving as campaign manager in the 2000 presidential election) was doing over that bad cellphone connection? Via Pam, I think I have an idea:

The US Navy asked Halliburton to repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana and Mississippi. ...

Earlier this year, the Navy awarded $350 million in contracts to KBR and three other companies to repair naval facilities in northwest Florida damaged by Hurricane Ivan, which struck in September 2004. The ongoing repair work involves aircraft support facilities, medium industrial buildings, marine construction, mechanical and electrical improvements, civil construction, and family housing renovation. In March, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which is tasked with responding to hurricane disasters, became a lobbyist for KBR. Joe Allbaugh was director of FEMA during the first two years of the Bush administration.

Nah, it's impolite to remind people of stuff like that. Conflicts with the myth.

posted by michael  11:01:56 PM  
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Not just New Orleans. As awful as things have been for people stranded in New Orleans, it's sobering to think that they may be the lucky ones: at least attention is being paid, if not yet sufficiently by the federal government, and some movement occurring, if not yet enough. Plaquemines and Jefferson parish, to the south and southeast of New Orleans, took the first hit from the storm, and St. Bernard parish, east of NOLA and bearing the brunt of the storm surge, has been reported to be largely under water. Those places aren't exactly crawling with media.

Nor with responders. The WWLTV blog reports that St. Bernard parish officials have yet to be contacted by anyone from FEMA, five days now after Katrina passed. And the blog follows that with an AP report, just to let you know that today's ceremonial Bush tour was every bit as futile, from the standpoint of actual results, as you might have expected it to be:

Thousands of people stranded in two swamped parishes south of New Orleans are just as desperate for food, water and supplies as those trapped in the city, but they can't get the attention of federal disaster relief officials, Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-La., said Friday.

And to make matters worse, Melancon said in a telephone interview, he was unable to deliver that message to President Bush during his visit to New Orleans on Friday because the president's security detail couldn't clear him in to meet with Bush on Air Force One.

After waiting 90 minutes while a U.S. marshal using a satellite phone repeatedly tried, and failed, to contact Bush's plane -- located just 300 yards away at New Orleans' Armstrong airport -- a disgusted Melancon left.

"After an hour and a half of that, and two hours to get down there, I am now back on my way, without seeing the president, not accomplishing anything in my mind today. I've wasted time while people are dying in South Louisiana," he said.

Be nice if somebody could spare a thought for the rural poor, too. Apparently they're even more expendable than New Orleanians.

posted by michael  7:51:53 PM  
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Just watched Bush's remarks live at the NOLA airport. Verbal glad-handing—thanks all around to the mayor, the governor, the senators. (Paging Anderson Cooper ...) "I understand" this and "I understand" that ... with an edge of defensiveness ("I get it, alright? Get off my back already!"), and because it's all and only about him. Not a word, not a single goddamn word, to suggest that there may have been any lag in response, to suggest that American citizens might have any legitimate concern over how the disaster has been handled and what that reveals about the state of emergency preparedness in the country in general. Or to suggest that those who are suffering and dying needlessly are owed any sort of apology.

I did a spit-take when he said that he "understands" that the crisis requires "an immediate response." What the fuck does he think is "immediate" about Friday?

And I nearly threw my laptop through the television while he fumbled his way through a narrative about efforts to fill in the breach of the 17th St. levee, and said—paraphrasing—"The people of New Orleans have got to understand that a lot of people are working hard" to deal with the problem. With the clear implication (present, really, throughout the remarks, but nowhere clearer than this) that nobody in the city had any right to be, you know, impatient or anything. A little gratitude, please.

Oh, and he got in a quick smirk about how he used to go over to New Orleans when he was in Texas to have a little fun—"a little too much fun, sometimes." He's confident NOLA will be a fun place once again, hell an even funner place, by the time all that hard work of restoration and repair is done.

I don't think I'll ever in my life forget the shame I feel as an American that this motherfucker is President.

posted by michael  5:21:59 PM  
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