Tired of Stupidity

The response to Hurricane Katrina has been marked by unimaginable stupidity. Sadly, that's just about the only thing one could call "unimaginable" in this horrible chapter.

The Adminstration's line is "There'll be a time for blame. Later. When everyone forgets about how stupidly we reacted." As White House spokesman Scott McClellan put it Wednesday: "...I'm just not going to engage in the blame game or finger-pointing that you're trying to get me to engage." In order to protect President Bush's image amidst a flood of criticism, some hysterical conservatives are spinning wild webs of attacks against anyone who would dare question the federal response - even the victims themselves.

Witness Rush Limbaugh: "New Orleans has been run by liberal Democrat governments, people, for as long as I can remember, and there's an entitlement mentality there. You are never going to have a thriving city relying on handouts, or on welfare payments, whatever you want to call them. It's just not going to happen."

Yikes. And that was No. 2 to the stupidest thing said this week. Enter the First Mother, Barbara Bush, who told a radio interviewer Monday after touring Houston's Astrodome: "What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

Yeah, well, here in the uhm, "No White House Spin Zone," with apologies to O'Reilly, I did want to explode one bid of stupidity: All the talk about the "unimaginable" destruction of a Category 4 or 5 direct hit on New Orleans.

Or, as President Bush told Diane Sawyer on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Sept. 1: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."

Ah, er, uhm, Mr. President, ah, you might want to go here:

Times-Picayune 2002 Series

The New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper warned repeatedly about the dire consequences of a direct strike by a major hurricane. In June 2002, they published a special series, "Washing Away," which is prescient. This part is most interesting:

"A stronger storm on a slightly different course - such as the path (Hurricane) Georges (in 1998) was on just 16 hours before landfall - could have realized emergency officials' worst-case scenario: hundreds of billions of gallons of lake water pouring over the levees into an area averaging 5 feet below sea level with no natural means of drainage. That would turn the city and the east bank of Jefferson Parish into a lake as much as 30 feet deep, fouled with chemicals and waste from ruined septic systems, businesses and homes. Such a flood could trap hundreds of thousands of people in buildings and in vehicles."

Spooky, eh? Not to be out-done, the fine folks at National Geographic did an outstanding feature in 2004 called "Gone With the Water." You can read it here:

Gone With the Water

You might want to focus on this part:

"The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it."

Maybe, Mr. President, what you meant to say was that no one in your Administration anticipated the breach while you all were on vacation a couple of weeks ago...

From Time Magazine: "The White House is 'very, very slow sometimes,' says a former Administration official. Besides, members of the A team were on vacation: chief of staff Andy Card was in Maine; Dick Cheney was in Wyoming; even Condoleezza Rice was out of town, shoe-shopping in Manhattan. Many of Bush's best p.r. minds, including media adviser Mark McKinnon, were in Greece at the wedding of White House communications director Nicolle Devenish. Had they been around, perhaps Bush would not have been accompanied only by his dog Barney when he returned from vacation in Crawford."  

Well, so much for those August-long vacations! What with terrorists attacking or hurricanes attacking...it's always something! It would seem being President is pretty much a full-time job. Leave the extended summer vacations to the out-of-work newspaper guys of the world...

Or at least READ something every now and then! At least, then, you wouldn't sound so, well, stupid.

Speaking of stupid, just for fun, here's a video of CNN weatherman Chad Myers flipping out on camera as Katrina approached the Gulf Coast:

Myers Flips Out

Yikes!

More later,


Mark

P.S. Don't forget to give: Red Cross Donation