THIS MODERN WORLD

Yesterday:

MICHAEL BROWN, DIRECTOR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY: Paula, I think it’s so important for the American public to understand exactly how catastrophic this disaster is.

I mean, we have a major American city, a major urban area that has been totally demolished. And what we’re finding is, is that, as we continue to do the evacuation and get people out, people who have completely lost everything, they have no place to go, they have nothing, that we’re finding other people who are literally coming out of second stories of homes, that are suddenly appearing on bridges that are not under water, that people who were unable or chose not to evacuate are suddenly appearing.

And so, this — this catastrophic disaster continues to grow. I will tell you this, though. Every person in that Convention Center, we just learned about that today. And so, I have directed that we have all available resources to get to that Convention Center to make certain that they have the food and water, the medical care that they need…

ZAHN: Sir, you aren’t telling me…

BROWN: … and that we take care of those bodies that are there.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Sir, you aren’t just telling me you just learned that the folks at the Convention Center didn’t have food and water until today, are you? You had no idea they were completely cut off?

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Paula, the federal government did not even know about the Convention Center people until today.

If you live in a major American city, you better pray there’s never a terrorist attack of this magnitude. Because this is the best these fuckers can do with several day’s notice before the disaster hits and 90% of the city having had time to evacuate beforehand. So unless the terrorists are kind enough to give advance notice, you are well and truly fucked.

African American woman at a bus stop: “They wouldn’t be taking this long if it was white people stuck down there!”

What is wrong with these people? Condi spent the day playing tennis.

For the benefit of the truly dense, John at americablog explains why the story of Condi’s lovely three-day getaway to the city matters:

The president, finally, has decided that the hurricane is a problem. He claims yesterday at 5pm, finally, that he’s going to be devoting his entire administration to saving the lives of the people currently dying in this growing national disaster. And what does a top member of his cabinet do? She goes to a Broadway comedy and today is buying multi-thousand-dollar shoes on 5th Avenue at the same time CNN is showing dead grandmothers in wheelchairs abandoned on the streets of New Orleans.

This is more than just a cheap shot at Condi. What in the blazes is this woman doing at a Broadway show in the middle of a national emergency? This is akin to going to a Broadway show in the middle of September 11. Don’t we expect the Secretary of State to work past 5pm on a day an entire American city is being wiped off the face of the planet? And shouldn’t she be doing something else today than shopping at filthy rich stores on 5th Avenue? Could she be – oh, I don’t know – working with foreign leaders, like the Mexicans, to see what immediate assistance they can offer to the neighbor?

New Orleans is ceasing to exist. What in God’s name is Bush doing letting his secretary of state go on vacation in the middle of this?

Also from americablog, watch for this little soundbite: “those who chose not to leave the city.”

To the reader who supplied the tape that forced Trent Lott’s resignation as Majority Leader. Lost your email, got a message for you. Contact me. (Those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about — the short story is that Trent Lott resigned after that tape passed through this website and was run on MSNBC. Oddly this crucial coup-de-grace is never mentioned in summaries of the incident, which just credit the blogs, usually Josh Marshall. Josh recognized the significance of Lott’s comments about the desirability of a Thurmond presidency immediately, and the blogs kept the story alive, but what brought Lott down was one TMW reader in the midwest with a long memory and a tape of Lott making exactly the same comment several years prior. But that doesn’t fit so neatly into the power-of-blogs narrative that’s been constructed since.)

An obviously angry Jack Cafferty on CNN:

I’m 62, I remember the riots in Watts, I remember the earthquake in San Francisco, I remember a lot of things — I have never, ever seen anything as badly bungled and poorly handled as this situation in New Orleans. Where the hell is the water for these people? Why can’t sandwiches be dropped to those people in that Superdome down there? This is Thursday! This is Thursday! This storm happened five days ago. It’s a disgrace, and don’t think the world isn’t watching. This is the government the taxpayers are paying for and it’s fallen right flat on its face, in the way its handled this thing.

CNN is also reporting that Charity Hospital in New Orleans has no security, no Guardsmen, no military or police at all.

But don’t worry — we’ve got all the troops we need to handle things.

Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.

People are dying, right now, as a result of the Bush administration’s utter fucking incompetence.

…Cafferty’s not the only one who’s angry. I just can’t believe what I’m seeing on the tv. For the past couple years, critics of the administration have been trying to point out a couple of things: (1) Iraq is diverting resources from actual homeland security and (2) the situation in Iraq is almost certainly a complete cock-up. Well, the first point has been proven at far too high a price, and as for the second — they can lie about Iraq and plenty of people will believe them. Iraq’s a long ways away. But this is New Orleans, Louisianna, and we’re all watching the biggest fuckup in history play out in real time.

Just think about this: we’ve all made a lot of jokes about the Department of Homeland Security over the past four years. But apparently, the Department of Homeland Security has absolutely no plan for dealing with devastation on this scale, which is supposedly the thing we’ve all been worried about for four years.

Neither do they seem to have given much thought to the transportation of refugees after a catastrophic event. In this case, we had 24 hours notice and the vast majority of the population got out on their own. If a terrorist attack of this magnitude were to occur, it would occur without warning, and the refugee problem would be exponentially greater. But right now, they can’t even get in enough busses to get those people out of the Superdome.

It may turn out that that stupid color coded chart really is Homeland Security’s proudest achievement.

* * *

I guess this is what you get when you elect leaders ideologically committed to the notion that government isn’t good for anything.