The last time God attacked those sinners on the Gulf coast, he made the storm look like a giant fetus[1] :
Now that Rita has been upgraded to category 5, it looks like God’s making the hurricane look like a giant boobie :
For those of you keeping score, if Katrina was divine punishment for abortion then Rita is probably divine punishment for pornography[2]. Funny how God, in spite of all the fair-weather friend treatment he’s been receiving lately, makes an effort to shape natural disasters around the pet peeves of the religious right. So if the next category 5 hurricane is shaped like a long mushroom, I think we can all infer Jesus’s thoughts on “protecting marriage”.
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.
Sure, the President is a dumbass, but at least he surrounds himself with smart people.
Grover Norquist, a leading advocate of substantially reducing the federal government, argued that the disaster only underlined the need for more tax cuts to spur the economy. “Step one is you deal with the problem - rebuild New Orleans,” he said, “and step two, you enact economic policies so you can afford to rebuild New Orleans.”
You can apply the GOP two-step approach to your personal finances as well. Step one is to spend a ton of money on everything you’ve ever wanted. Step two is to get a ton of money so you can afford all the things you’ve already bought. It’s easy and there’s no way it could possibly backfire.
We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes
I thought I knew almost everything about the right’s campaign to blame Katrina’s victims for their situation, but Amanda Marcotte has dug deep into the muck. It’s ugly and it stinks down there — a toxic soup, as they say — but it’s a place we need to explore.
In a related story, the Los Angeles Times notes that the Gretna City Council just passed a resolution supporting the police chief’s decision to block the bridge that offered one of the few escape routes out of New Orleans. They also mention that Gretna may be the most famous example of a callous response to disaster, but it’s not the only one. To the east of New Orleans, officials in St. Bernard Parish stacked cars on the road to block people from trying to get out of the city.
Remember both pieces the next time somebody complains that when Democrats talk about race and class, it “alienates independents and moderates.” Something is clearly out of whack when we can’t tell “independents and moderates” that keeping victims from fleeing a disaster is wrong. In fact, something stinks if they can’t see it for themselves.
We have to talk about that smell in the room because it’s a sign that’s something is rotting and it might just be our country.
This sort of thing drives me crazy. Race and class are the fundamental issues here. Not only were they the primary factors determining who got left behind (or blocked from leaving, or forced at gunpoint to stay back), they continue to effect everything.
Digby wrote a post earlier this week that was insightful even beyond daily Digbyan standards, about why you can’t separate class and racial issues. It’s not just the weak argument that I admit I repeat too often — that since African Americans are disproportionately poor, it’s patently obvious that race and class are bound together in this country. That argument leaves an opening for reasonable people to accept the fact and dismiss its importance: The poverty of African Americans, they believe, is part of an ugly historical legacy that, little by little, we’re extricating ourselves from (or, in a less noble frame, that “they” will extricate themselves from with a little hard work and responsibility). In his speech last night, Bush played on that opening, talking about “the history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America,” but not about current racism. In Bush’s formula, we are trying to overcome the effects of historical racism. Current racism either doesn’t exist or doesn’t matter.
Digby cuts to the heart of why that’s nonsense:
Racism informs many Americans’ ideas about poverty. It is also one of
the darker philosphical underpinnings of our vaunted American
individualism. From the beginning we had problems because government
programs often had to help blacks as a last resort. It is why today
many people believe that welfare has a black face even though far more
welfare recipients are white. It is why we have developed the idea that
the poor (pictured in our minds’ eye as black and brown) are lazy and
shiftless rather than unfortunate. (Europe, with its long history of
class division doesn’t see poverty this way.) It’s why certain people
made the assumption that the poor and black in New Orleans were all on
welfare rather than the truth, which is that many of them are members
of the urban working poor.
********
That is why liberals have to accept that race must be part of the
argument. We are making progress. Things are better. But progress
requires staying focused on the issue and ensuring that there is no
slippage, no matter how difficult and cumbersome this debate feels at
times. The liberal agenda depends upon forcing this out of the national
bloodstream with each successive generation not only for moral reasons,
which I know we all believe, but it also depends upon forcing it out of
the bloodstream for practical reasons. Until this knee jerk reaction to
black poverty among certain whites (and Pat Buchanan), particularly in
the south, is brought to heel we are fighting an uphill battle to
muster the consensus we need to create the kind of nation that
guarantees its citizens a modern, decent safety net regardless of race
or class.
It’s twenty-first century racism, not the historical legacy, that keeps us from responding humanely to the crisis we witnessed this month. Because of current racism, pervasive racism, writers at respectable newspapers get paid to spew the kind of garbage Amanda has dug up, expecting that few of us will choke on our morning coffee as we read it. It allows far more Americans than most of us would like to admit to make assumptions about the poor that people in other countries can’t make so easily — assumptions that are far from reality. And that keeps solutions out of sight as effectively as guns and piled up cars. It allows the real culprits not only to escape blame for the problem, but even to profit from it.
Theoretically, it’s in the short term interest of Democrats to play up Bush’s incompetence, and how his contempt for government has created the kind of government that can’t fill its most basic function — protecting citizens. That frame has the advantage of being true: Bush has made everyone, even young, white, healthy and affluent Americans, less safe. Right now, I think the polls are reflecting the fact that even a lot of Americans who think they can take care of themselves in most circumstances have become cognizant of their vulnerability in the reign of hacks. I don’t have a lot of faith in their capacity to hold on to that insight, however. And if anything shakes them from their current awareness, frankly, I’m afraid it will be racism. If we don’t confront the way the myths of savage and irresponsible poor, and mostly black, people are shaping this story, that’s going to become the story. And a year from now, you can try all you want to tell “independents and moderates” that the Republicans made them less safe, but all they’ll remember is that responsible and industrious people got out. And they will be sure that, in a catastrophe, they would be among the virtuous and hard-working few who escape.
A lie, certainly. A dangerous and self-deluding lie. One no one could support except on a crutch of racism.
If you don’t strike directly at the racism, you’re helping to fashion the crutch.
I’m back from my extended vacation from blogging. Having avoided the blogosphere entirely during my honeymoon, I have thankfully only caught bits and pieces of the last two weeks worth of news. Playing catch-up on the plane, I read the incredible cover story in the newest issue of Newsweek. It’s a sobering look at povery in America, yet it ends with this unintentionally hilarious proposal :
Beyond the thousands of individual efforts necessary to save New Orleans and ease poverty lie some big political choices. Until Katrina intervened, the top priority for the GOP when Congress reconvened was permanent repeal of the estate tax, which applies to far less than 1 percent of taxpayers. (IRS figures show that only 1,607 wealthy people in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi even pay the tax, out of more than 4 million taxpayers — one twenty-fifth of 1 percent.) Repeal would cost the government $24 billion a year. Meanwhile, House GOP leaders are set to slash food stamps by billions in order to protect subsidies to wealthy farmers. But Katrina could change the climate. The aftermath was not a good omen for the Grover Norquists of the world, who want to slash taxes more and shrink government to the size where it can be “strangled in the bathtub.”
What kind of president does George W. Bush want to be? He can limit his legacy to Iraq, the war on terror and tax cuts for the rich — or, if he seizes the moment, he could undertake a midcourse correction that might materially change the lives of millions. Katrina gives Bush an only-Nixon-could-go-to-China opportunity, if he wants it.
George W. Bush caring about the poor? That’s like saying Hamas has a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reach out to the Jewish community. It ain’t gonna happen, buddy.
George W. Bush isn’t going to do anything to stem the tide of poverty because he doesn’t understand poverty. He doesn’t know what it’s like to have to decide which bill to pay this month. He’s never had to memorize a bus schedule. He’s never had to live on ramen noodles and whatever food he can get for free at his shitty restaurant job. If he really knew what it was like to be poor, he’d understand that a few hundred bucks isn’t going to be enough to undo the damage of a dead-end job and crushing debt.
Tonight Bush gave a speech which many observers were saying would make or break his presidency. It was the standard laundry list of things he’d be throwing money at mixed with rhetoric that would sound impressive coming out of the mouth of someone who understood what it meant, but here’s how the President squandered his opportunity to actually do something to help the poor :
Within the Gulf region are some of the most beautiful and historic places in America. As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well.
That poverty has roots in a history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunity of America. We have a duty to confront this poverty with bold action.
So let us restore all that we have cherished from yesterday, and let us rise above the legacy of inequality.
When the streets are rebuilt, there should be many new businesses, including minority-owned businesses, along those streets.
When the houses are rebuilt, more families should own, not rent, those houses.
. . .
It is entrepreneurship that creates jobs and opportunity. It is entrepreneurship that helps break the cycle of poverty. And we will take the side of entrepreneurs as they lead the economic revival of the Gulf region.
Yeah, it’s just a bunch of recycled “ownership society” garbage from last year, polished up a bit so it doesn’t smell as much like shit.
I agree with the President’s stated goals, but let’s get real here. Poverty has gone up over the last four years, yet the President’s only plan to deal with a problem he’s been forced to address is to do the same thing he’s been trying to do all along? The problem here isn’t that there aren’t enough government incentives to help minority-owned small businesses, it’s that tens of thousands of people are living in makeshift homeless shelters. They don’t need chatter about home ownership, they need to know where the hell they’re going to get food, clean water, and a bed to sleep on. Telling a poor family with minimum wage earners that they should run their own business and own their own house sounds great on paper, but these patronizing ideas are about as constructive as telling someone with a broken leg that they should try to run a marathon.
The good news is, I’ve just added papers in Santa Fe and Santa Cruz. The bad news is, I’ve just been dropped by the Detroit Metro Times. As always, I discourage astroturfing (which is why I don’t provide direct links in these cases), but if you live in the Detroit area, please be sure to drop the paper a line and let them know what you think of this decision. As I’ve noted before, the papers are my bread and butter — if I had to live off my online revenues, I’d be in trouble. They’re also the best way to reach the sort of reader who isn’t directly seeking me out, which I consider important. Anyway, if you read the Metro Times, I’d appreciate the help — editors are sometimes willing to reconsider these decisions if they get enough feedback.
…one more thing: be polite. Abusive email does far more harm than good.
…also: I make no secret of the fact that I’m encouraging this response, so an initial flood of email is easily discounted. The thing is to keep the responses flowing over a longer period of time — that’s sometimes the only way to convince an editor that you’re not just zombies reacting to my mind control beams, that you actually do want to see the cartoon continue in their paper.
The missteps on Katrina came at a crucial moment in Bush’s second term, when his top legislative priority at home, Social Security reform, was already on life support and the war in Iraq was becoming a mounting economic and political burden. The Administration that had been determined to defy history and ward off the second-term curse — and early lame-duck status — by controlling the agenda and seizing opportunities appears increasingly at the mercy of events, at home and abroad.
And as if the West Wing were suddenly snakebit, his franchise player, senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, was on the disabled list for part of last week, working from home after being briefly hospitalized with painful kidney stones.
Bush has always said the Presidency is about doing big things, and a friend who chatted with him one evening in July said he seemed to be craving a fresh mission even though the one he has pursued in Iraq is far from being on a steady footing. “He was looking for the next really important thing to do,” the friend said. “You could hear him almost sorting it out to himself. He just sort of figured it would come.”
But when it did, he did not immediately show that he sensed its magnitude. On the Monday that Hurricane Katrina landed and the Crescent City began drowning, Bush was joshing with Senator John McCain on the tarmac of an Air Force base in Arizona, posing with a melting birthday cake. Like a scene out of a Michael Moore mockumentary, he was heading into a long-planned Medicare round table at a local country club, joking that he had “spiced up” his entourage by bringing the First Lady, then noting to the audience that he had phoned Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff from Air Force One. “I said, ‘Are you working with the Governor?’” Bush recounted. “He said, ‘You bet we are.’” But the President was not talking about the killer storm. He was talking about immigration, and the Governor was Arizona’s.
Amid a slew of stories this weekend about the embattled presidency and the blundering government response to the drowning of New Orleans, some journalists who are long-time observers of the White House are suddenly sharing scathing observations about President Bush that may be new to many of their readers.
Is Bush the commanding, decisive, jovial president you’ve been hearing about for years in so much of the mainstream press?
Maybe not so much.
Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don’t emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies — the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department — has failed a big test.
…from a Gambit writer who went into labor that weekend:
All day Saturday, people were getting ready to evacuate. Everyone you saw in the street would say, “Are you leaving?” Among our friends, it was 50-50 between people staying, people going. We were debating because I was so enormously pregnant — 38 weeks along, big as a house and four centimeters dilated, which meant I could go on to labor at any moment.
Last year, I had evacuated for Hurricane Ivan. We spent 14 hours on the road, and then we got two drops of rain in New Orleans. I knew I couldn’t do that this time. For one thing, you really don’t own your bladder at that point in pregnancy. And if I had gone into labor, I probably would been forced to give birth in a car.
At about 10 p.m., when Merv got home from his gig, my contractions were getting pretty close. So he borrowed a car and drove like a speed demon to Touro — me in the back seat, on all fours and in a lot of pain. When we arrived to the hospital, they discovered Hector was lying sideways, so they had to turn him about 90 degrees before he could come out. I could have never given birth to him in a car. It turned out we probably did the right thing by staying.
I started to push at midnight. Hector wasn’t born until 4:14 in the morning. He was a cute, mellow little dude and we called some people to say that we were staying and then I fell asleep. About eight hours after I gave birth, the hospital was put on lock down, which meant no one could leave and no one could enter. So after that, I really didn’t think again about evacuating.
About 6 a.m. on Monday morning, we were awakened by the head nurse. The hurricane came through — it sounded like a train — and she was telling everyone to move in the hallways. Originally, they had thought we would be okay in our rooms because the glass was rated for 200 mph winds. But after a few windows broke in the upper stories, someone decided all the patients would sit out the hurricane in the hallways.
* * *
Merv went to a nearby grocery store with some other new dads from the floor. The guys came back carrying these big bags of groceries and I said, “Oh my God, you were able to get to a grocery store? There was one open?” They were like, “Kinda.” They said everyone was grabbing stuff — black, white, even cops. It didn’t matter.
While Merv was at the store, he heard that the A & P owner over on 19th Street had opened his doors and said, “Take whatever you want, just don’t wreck the store.” It seemed like it was one of those things everyone was doing in order to recover. People were just taking what they needed. Although, to be honest, I think the liquor went first in most of the stores. The liquor and the cigarettes.
From my window I saw these police loading up on boxes of Cheese-Its, and cases of Powerade and barbequing. Apparently, there were a couple of purse snatchings and muggings on the first floor of the hospital, so they had called in the cops.
My curiosity spurred by the posts about the incomplete list of Louisiana parishes in Bush’s pre-Katrina declaration of emergency, I printed out a Louisiana map and played coloring book for a few minutes just now.
The results are so insane that I had to post this graphic on my site to share with the rest of the class. My html and file-transfer skills being what they are, however, you’ll have to click on over to puduland to see it. Apologies.
Look, it’s really very simple. On Saturday, August 27, 2005 — two days before Hurricane Katrina made landfall — President George W. Bush assumed responsibility for the coordination of “all disaster relief efforts” in the State of Louisiana. This is the specific, undisputed language of Bush’s declaration of a State of Emergency, issued that day by the White House, and still available for viewing on the White House website. The responsibility for coordinating all disaster relief efforts in New Orleans clearly rested with the White House. Despite all the post-disaster spin by the Bush Faction and its sycophants, despite all the earnest media analyses, the lines of authority are clear and indisputable. Here is the voice of George W. Bush himself, in the proclamation issued in his name, over his signature on Saturday, August 27, 2005:
“The President today declared an emergency exists in the State of Louisiana and ordered Federal aid to supplement state and local response efforts in the parishes located in the path of Hurricane Katrina beginning on August 26, 2005, and continuing. The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures”
Bush goes on to say: “Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.”
…or maybe not. Reader Brian L., among others, notices an oddity:
Note the salient text:
“The President’s action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts…in the parishes of Allen, Avoyelles, Beauregard, Bienville, Bossier, Caddo, Caldwell, Claiborne, Catahoula, Concordia, De Soto, East Baton Rouge, East Carroll, East Feliciana, Evangeline, Franklin, Grant, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Livingston, Madison, Morehouse, Natchitoches, Pointe Coupee, Ouachita, Rapides,
Red River, Richland, Sabine, St. Helena, St. Landry, Tensas, Union, Vernon, Webster, West Carroll, West Feliciana, and Winn.”
Conspicuous by their absence are Orleans, St. Bernard, St. Tammany, Plaquemines, Jefferson and basically every coastal parish, and the next parishes closest to the coast. So then, let me understand this: Team Bush saw by 26 August that Katrina would be sufficiently dangerous to warrant a preemptive disaster declaration for what looks like about 65-70% of the land area of Lousiana, and he declares it for the _landlocked_ parishes?
Gee, I don’t know, Barb. You’re right about this whole disaster thing working out well, but it seems to be working for some people a lot closer to you than anyone living at the Astrodome. I know you’re busy, so I’ll try to make it stand out for you:
Perhaps no city in the United States is in a better spot than Houston to turn Katrina’s tragedy into opportunity. And businesses here are already scrambling to profit in the hurricane’s aftermath.
Oil services companies based here are racing to carry out repairs to damaged offshore platforms in the Gulf of Mexico; the promise of plenty of work to do sent shares in two large companies, Halliburton and Baker Hughes, soaring to 52-week highs last week. The Port of Houston is preparing for an increase in traffic as shippers divert cargoes away from the damaged ports of Pascagoula, Miss., and New Orleans.
Owners of office space here are witnessing a surge in leasing as New Orleans companies, including that city’s oldest bank, scramble to set up new headquarters in Houston, helping to shore up its sagging property market. With brio that might make an ambulance-chaser proud, one company, National Realty Investments, is offering special financing deals “for hurricane survivors only,” with no down payments and discounted closing costs.
All this, of course, is capitalism at work, moving quickly to get resources to where they are needed most. And those who move fastest are likely to do best.
**********
Halliburton differs from many oil services companies in that it also does significant business with the federal government. The company, which has contracts in Iraq, has a contract with the Navy that has already kept it busy after Hurricane Katrina. The company’s KBR unit was doing repairs and cleanup at three naval facilities in Mississippi last week.
Halliburton was also planning to go to New Orleans to start repairs at other naval facilities as soon as it was considered safe to do so, Cathy Mann, a spokeswoman, said.
They really are bringing the war home, so pardon me if this doesn’t reassure me:
Stressing his focus on victims, Mr Bush also pledged not to allow “bureaucracy… to get in the way of getting the job done for the people”.
He also announced that Vice President Dick Cheney would visit Gulf Coast region on Thursday to help assess the government’s work.
Nice to see him keeping in touch with the old guys from the company.
