Myers’ reaction is indeed priceless. I’d love to see how that scene played out as they cut away to Chris Tucker.
Senator Landrieu released the following statement today:
Yesterday, I was hoping President Bush would come away from his tour of the regional devastation triggered by Hurricane Katrina with a new understanding for the magnitude of the suffering and for the abject failures of the current Federal Emergency Management Agency. 24 hours later, the President has yet to answer my call for a cabinet-level official to lead our efforts. Meanwhile, FEMA, now a shell of what it once was, continues to be overwhelmed by the task at hand.
I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims – far more efficiently than buses – FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.
"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast – black and white, rich and poor, young and old – deserve far better from their national government.
It’s jaw-dropping.
Too many appalling updates to http://www.crooksandliars.com/ for me to list all the links:
- Chertoff saying Kristina wasn’t a huge emergency
- David Brooks’s televised Bush-bashing
Seems like there’s a few people over there that need to be fucking fired.
Landrieu is the senator, actually.
So which is more unbelievable? I can’t decide.
- It happened as she describes.
- It didn’t happen but the governor put out a press release that’s the equivalent of going nuclear on the president.
He claimed that they don’t get the National guard members 24 hours notice and send them packing unless it’s an emergency. But, New Mexico, had already offered on Sunday to send theirs and it got bogged down in paperwork and weren’t given teh go-ahead until Thursday!
Anyone seen Shep Smith since his confrontation with reality on Fox? He seems to be MIA though Geraldo’s still around but, now, acting oddly compliant and apologetic (while saying he’s not).
But Brooks? He’s still livid. Here’s an editorial from today’s paper.
The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled. Leaving the poor in New Orleans was the moral equivalent of leaving the injured on the battlefield. No wonder confidence in civic institutions is plummeting.
And the key fact to understanding why this is such a huge cultural moment is this: Last week’s national humiliation comes at the end of a string of confidence-shaking institutional failures that have cumulatively changed the nation’s psyche.
Over the past few years, we have seen intelligence failures in the inability to prevent Sept. 11 and find W.M.D.'s in Iraq. We have seen incompetent postwar planning. We have seen the collapse of Enron and corruption scandals on Wall Street. We have seen scandals at our leading magazines and newspapers, steroids in baseball, the horror of Abu Ghraib.
Public confidence has been shaken too by the steady rain of suicide bombings, the grisly horror of Beslan and the world’s inability to do anything about rising oil prices.
Each institutional failure and sign of helplessness is another blow to national morale. The sour mood builds on itself, the outraged and defensive reaction to one event serving as the emotional groundwork for the next.
Hey, asshole. You voted for these guys. Nice work.
Slate: “Rebellion of The Talking Heads”
“This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco. This ain’t no foolin’ around.”
And this ain’t a story about the band either.
I can only stomach so much of Fox, so I haven’t seen Shep but that doesn’t mean anything. I saw a few moments of Geraldo beaming in to the ugsome Hannity and Colmes, and I was just struck by how both Hannity and, I think, Greta van Susteren (sp) were acting like Geraldo was a drunk stupid relative they were forced to put up with because their family patriarch loved him. He was saying the most inane things, just prattling on, and they just seemed so weary of him.
At one point he went off on how this situation was a holocaust. “Being a Jewish person, I don’t use this term lightly…” Then he went on this diatribe about how Americans reacted to this holocaust would define them, because so many closed their doors to the Jews after that holocaust, etc. etc. All through this, though, he was saying nothing negative about the govt., just going on and on about the duty of mankind or something. Talking like a guy on speed. Finally Hannity had to cut him off, again with that weary tone teachers reserve for that one Tracy Flick kid in class who won’t shut up during class discussions.
Then there was this really weird moment when some Airborne guys he knew from Iraq came up and he just seemed to totally forget he was on the air, acting like he was at a reunion of his frat brothers. You could just feel everybody at Fox News putting their heads in their hands and wanting to cry. It’s great watching them unravel, but they’re too much of a monolith to really let this hurt them.
-Amanpour
I have been keeping an eye out for him but have not seen him. His absence was particularly noticeable from last night’s whatever-it-was when “all” their correspondents from the hurricane zone were onscreen and discussing things. They may have told him to take the weekend off. We will see on Monday I guess.
Normally I wouldn’t be all that concerned about talk of the Fox party line being imposed on the recalcitrant but this is an interesting and public test case - particularly as his reporting was some of the best there’s been.
Obviously a firing offense.
Well, back on the topic of NO politicians freaking out, Here is Mary Landrieu threatening to punch Bush.
I’ll be glad when all these people can decompress and get some good sleep. Just because there’s only one crane there doesn’t mean the levee has been abandoned forever, and it’s hard to see her get so upset over it.
I think that’s the same site mentioned in “Bush tore down all the food and construction work after his photoop,” is why.
I’ve heard about that but I haven’t seen anything definitive either way about what happened there. I do know that the Army Corps of Engineers will not abandon the levee.
I’m having a thought right now. A journalist-owned news channel.
I was just sitting here thinking about all these journalists who have been impacted by this situation. Those that were there on scene, and those that were not. I was thinking about how they seemed to have turned a corner. Then I was thinking about how their corporate masters were going to be reining them in shortly. Because they cannot be allowed to continue like this. The thought of this happening, of these people who have experienced this awful awakening of passion being neutered by their employers, fills me with a kind of despair.
Suddenly I thought of United Airlines. I don’t know what happened with United Airlines in the last couple of years, but I recall that old Gene Hackman voiced ad campaign after the employees supposedly bought the airline. I recall what a good idea it seemed to have employees running things. Again, I don’t know what became of that, but it seemed like a nice idea.
It would be so cool if these journalists who have been so moved to try to ask the hard questions, at long last, could break away and make their own news channel. Journalists unafraid to stand up to the powers because they are no longer owned by them. Turning this terrible epiphany into some kind of new dawn for American reporting.
I suppose I can always dream.
“He was never a person. He was a journalist.”
-Amanpour
The New York Times has an article up about the official whitehouse spin about to start. What I find interesting about it though is that it’s sourced from Republican sources, and it clearly comes across as negative IMO. So are we starting to see some Republicans turn on the administration?
Hmm, couldn’t they arrest her for making threats against the president? :D
I do think it would be good for these folks to calm down, rest up and decompress before the political fur starts flying too much.
Interesting article I came across though on the whole blame game.
Bush seriously needs to shape the fuck up.[/quote]
Yeah, that’s pretty f’ing weak.
Wow, the real cause of all this was the welfare state. Talk about the blame game. Blame it on “welfare parasites”:
But what about criminals and welfare parasites? Do they worry about saving their houses and property? They don’t, because they don’t own anything. Do they worry about what is going to happen to their businesses or how they are going to make a living? They never worried about those things before. Do they worry about crime and looting? But living off of stolen wealth is a way of life for them.
Emphasis mine.
For all the talk of the blame game. they sure do a lot of blaming. I wouldn’t expect less from Objectivism though.
No hurricane would dare approach John Galt! :lol:
And Objectivist a Scientologist and a Fundamentalist walk into a bar…