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Tuesday, September 13, 2005 |
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My Bad Shithead Finally Learns Where the Buck Stops. Mighty White of Him, Wouldn't You Say? Plus: Mary Landrieu Kisses More Ass, Dems Kowtow to "Special Interests" and Paulison Gets Brought Up to Speed
WASHINGTON - President Bush for the first time took responsibility Tuesday for federal government mistakes in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and suggested the calamity raised broader questions about the government's ability to handle both natural disasters and terror attacks. "Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at a joint White House news conference with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani. "And to the extent that the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility. I want to know what went right and what went wrong," said Bush. Facing sharp criticism and the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, Bush scheduled a speech to the nation from Louisiana for Thursday evening. It will be his fourth trip to the devastated Gulf Coast since the storm struck two weeks ago. It was the closest Bush has come to publicly faulting any federal officials involved in the hurricane response, which has been widely criticized as disjointed and slow. Some federal officials have sought to blame state and local officials for being unprepared to cope with the disaster. Sen. Mary Landrieu (news, bio, voting record), D-La., welcomed Bush's conciliatory remarks. "Accountability at every level is critical, and leadership begins at the top," she said. Other Democrats were less charitable. "The season has come for Americans to look homeward ... instead of continuing to spend billions of dollars in Iraq," said Sen. Robert C. Byrd (news, bio, voting record), D-W.Va. And Louisiana's Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of moving too slowly in recovering the bodies. The dead "deserve more respect than they have received," she said at state police headquarters in Baton Rouge. Meanwhile, R. David Paulison, in his first full day on the job as acting FEMA director, told reporters in Washington the government would step up its efforts to find more permanent housing for the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors now in shelters. "We're going to get those people out of the shelters, and we're going to move and get them the help they need," Paulison said. Bush selected him to replace Michael Brown, who resigned on Monday after being recalled as the top onsite disaster-relief coordinator. Brown, a Republican lawyer with little previous disaster-management experience, drew fierce criticism for his handling of the crisis. Paulison, a career firefighter with 30 years of rescue experience, said he was busy "getting brought up to speed." Bush promised him in a Monday night phone call that he would have "the full support of the federal government," Paulison said. The storm displaced a million people, destroyed large areas of cities and communities and heavily damaged roads, bridges, canals and oil and natural gas facilities. Bush's acceptance of responsibility came in response to a reporter's question on whether the United States was capable of handling another terrorist attack, given its halting and widely criticized response to Katrina. "That's a very important question," Bush said. "And it's in our national interest that we find out exactly what went on — so that we can better respond." "I'm not going to defend the process going in, but I am going to defend the people who are on the front line of saving lives," he added. "I also want people in America to understand how hard people are working to save lives down there in not only New Orleans, but surrounding parishes and along the Gulf Coast." Also on Tuesday: Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said teams of federal auditors would scrutinize billions of dollars worth of government contracts. "We're going to cut through red tape, but we're not going to cut through laws and rules that govern ethics," he said. Congress has appropriated more than $60 billion for reconstruction. The Democratic National Committee accused the administration on Tuesday of "giving no-bid contracts to Bush's political cronies." Notice, By The Way, What those Elitist Liberal Democrats Are Up to, While Congressional Republicans Take on the Endangered Species Act and the Estate Tax: "Farm-state Democrats said they would ask for emergency money for farmers pummeled by Katrina as well as those struggling under high energy prices, drought and other natural disasters. Energy costs alone will shave farm incomes for North Dakota farmers by one-third to one-half, said Sen. Kent Conrad (news, bio, voting record), D-N.D. "A group of Democratic senators pressed Congress for a $5 billion upgrade of communications equipment that would make it easier for police, firefighters and other law enforcement authorities to talk to each other during emergencies. A similar measure was rejected in July as part of a homeland security bill. "They must be able to communicate with each other. This is a life and death issue," said Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich."
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By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer |
Quote(s) of the Day "You know something? After watching them shake it, I can absolutely understand why Brazil is totally devoted to my favorite body part -- the ass." --Arnold Schwarzenegger, on bikini-clad Brazilian dancers featured in the 1983 Playboy video Carnival in Rio, hosted by--Arnold Schwarzenegger
"Now, wait a minute, wait a minute. They may be misleading, but they are his answers." --Senate Judiciary Committe Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA), cutting off Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) during John Roberts' confirmation hearing when Biden opined that Roberts' answers to his questions were "misleading". 2:19:50 PM comment []
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The Sprawl ReportAn occasional chronicle of the many consequences of Suburbia (other than the obvious "Why am I looking at these ugly houses when I could be looking at farms, hills, meadows and woods?") Snow removal cited for rise in salt in Northeast streams By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
WASHINGTON - The amount of salt dissolved in streams in the Northeast is rising, and chemicals used to clear snow and ice from the roads are being blamed. "We're basically hardening the watersheds and feeding them a high-salt diet. There is a direct connection between the number of driveways and parking lots we have and the quality of our water," said Sujay Kaushal of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science in Frostburg, Md. Kaushal and colleagues tested water in streams in rural areas of New Hampshire, upstate New York and Maryland, comparing the amount of dissolved salt over several decades. Their findings are reported in today's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "We think that the salt has built up in the ground water, so even if we quit applying it, it would still be slightly salty for decades," Kaushal said. In New Hampshire's White Mountains, some streams exceeded 100 milligrams per liter of chloride on a seasonal basis, the researchers said, similar to the salt level in the region where the Hudson River meets the ocean. Salt concentrations measured in the same streams in the 1970s were around 10 mg per liter, Kaushal said. The Environmental Protection Agency's safe drinking water limit for salinity is 500 mg per liter. In streams feeding into Baltimore's reservoirs, salinity increased from about 10 mg per liter to about 50 mg per liter since the 1970s, while in Dutchess County, N.Y., the increase was from 30 mg per liter to 60 mg per liter since the 1980s, the researchers said. The National Science Foundation, EPA and A.W. Mellon Foundation funded the study. 2:09:42 PM comment []
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Here's a Photograph FEMA Doesn't Want You to See Sorry, FEMA, it's still a semi-free country.
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Thank You, Liberal Media So the mainstream media has finally awoken to the cancer that is George W. Bush. Too little, too late, folks. As the post below articulates, if you had defied your corporate overlords and done your job last year, the son of a bitch might be in exile right now, talking to the tree stumps in Crawford and waiting for the indictments to roll in. Instead, we, and the world, are stuck with him for another three years. Nice work, folks. Thanks a whole lot. One thousand, two hundred and twenty-four daysWhen California voters woke up one morning in 2003 and discovered that they didn't much like their governor, there was something they could do about it. California law provides an avenue for recalling elected officials, and the voters took advantage of it, tossing Gray Davis out of office just 11 months after they'd elected him to a second term. We can't all be Californians. There's no recall provision in U.S. Constitution, and the federal "lemon law" applies to cars but not candidates. Impeachment is the only way to oust a sitting U.S. president, and, with solid Republican majorities in the House and in the Senate, George W. Bush has no need to worry that the I-word is about to become a thing in the reality-based world. So eight months in to the president's second term, it's time for Americans to get their minds around this: The president may be "politically diminished both nationally and internationally," as NBC News observes this morning, but he's still going to be the president for another 1,224 days and 14 hours. Did it have to come to this? George W. Bush got 51 percent of the vote in November, but a Washington Post-ABC News poll out today says that only 42 percent of Americans approve of the way in which Bush is handling his job now. What are they seeing in their president now that they didn't see in November? And if the mainstream media had cast a more critical eye on Bush during his first term, would the nation not be suffering along with him through a second term now? Dan Froomkin raises a variation on that second question in his latest column. All of a sudden, Froomkin notes, the mainstream press is full of stories about Bush the Failure. Newsweek says the president is so "cold and snappish in private" that his aides are afraid to bring him bad news, a dynamic that played a role in Bush's apparent cluelessness about the extent of Katrina's destruction. Time talks of the "bubble" in which the president has isolated himself and regales its readers with the story of an aide who, sometime during Bush's first term, found himself dry heaving in the bathroom after a typically unpleasant exchange with his testy boss. It's all and well and good, but where were these stories before Bush won re-election? More to the point, why did the mainstream media paint pretty much the opposite picture of the president during his first four years in office? "Maybe it's Bush's sinking poll numbers -- he is, after all, undeniably an unpopular president now," Froomkin writes. "Maybe it's the way that the federal response to the flood has cut so deeply against Bush's most compelling claim to greatness: His resoluteness when it comes to protecting Americans. But for whatever reason, critical observations and insights that for so long have been zealously guarded by mainstream journalists, and only doled out in teaspoons if at all, now seem to be flooding into the public sphere." And they're not just the "critical observations and insights," either. In some cases, there are facts that the mainstream media simply chose not to share with the American public before Bush was re-elected. As we noted last month, Time knew from the very beginning that Karl Rove had played a role in outing Valerie Plame, but it chose to remain silent -- essentially complicit in the Bush administration lie about the case -- so as not to influence the presidential election. Maybe none of it would have mattered. Maybe a thousand stories in the mainstream press about a snippy and isolated president wouldn't have changed the minds of people who saw in Bush a strong leader who brought the country together after one terrorist attack and would keep it safe from another. But the president's poll numbers over the last few weeks suggest that even his supporters are capable of changing their minds when confronted with the truth about Iraq, about the state of this nation and about the man they re-elected just 10 months ago. 10:47:57 AM comment []
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The Republican Hypocrisy Machine Rolls OnIt's wrong to exploit a "national tragedy" for political gain. Isn't it?On the first day of confirmation hearings for John Roberts, Republican senators spent a lot of time explaining what Democrats shouldn't be allowed to ask George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominee. As Michael Scherer puts it today in Salon, "One by one, Republican senators cited judicial ethics rules and historical precedent to explain why the American people should not expect to hear anything of substance from Roberts before he becomes the chief justice." Former Sen. and Attorney General John Ashcroft, providing commentary for CNN, said at one point Monday afternoon that there were just two things that Roberts shouldn't have to address: the future or the past. As usual, though, it was Republican Sen. John Cornyn who dived farthest off the deep end of partisan hackery. When Democratic Sens. Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy noted in their opening statements Monday that Hurricane Katrina has reminded us that many Americans are "left out and left behind," that we "cannot continue to ignore the injustice, the inequality and the gross disparities that exist in our society," and that we need a "responsive" federal government, well, Cornyn felt the need to set things straight. "I believe the American people will see this for what it is," Cornyn said in a statement released by his office. "We ought not to appropriate a national tragedy in a misguided effort to further a political interest of any sort." That's right, Sen. Cornyn. It's wrong to "appropriate a national tragedy" to "further a political interest," and that's something your party would never do. It's not like the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee once offered photos of George W. Bush on 9/11 in exchange for campaign contributions. It's not like the Republican National Committee decided to hold its 2004 convention later than usual and in New York to capitalize on a 9/11 anniversary. It's not like the Bush-Cheney campaign ran a campaign ad featuring footage of the destroyed World Trade Center or firefighters carrying a flag-covered body. And it's not like the president invokes the memories of 9/11 again and again and again to sell his war on Iraq, to obscure the effects of his tax cuts, to get himself reelected and to gussy up his administration's response to Katrina. Appropriating a national tragedy to "further a political interest"? The Democrats know something about that, Sen. Cornyn. They've learned at the feet of masters. 10:37:31 AM comment []
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