Jesus is comin'

I've said this before, but I really don't like the fact that the guy with his finger on the button believes he will be raptured up and not have to live through the nuclear hell he could create. No, I don't believe he will be raptured up, but I'm not willing to pay the price of our beautiful planet, just so Bush can find out he's been hoodwinked(again).

Crazy sons of bitches.

The Pentagon has drafted a revised doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons that envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use them to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear arms to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.


Cause after all, their intelligence on WMD's is soooo accurate.

UPDATE: everybody's asking the questions now. The AFP points out

The doctrine also gives the Pentagon the green light to deploy nuclear weapons to parts of the world where their future use is considered the most likely and urges troops to constantly train for nuclear warfare. ....

The doctrine reminds that while first use of nuclear weapons may draw condemnation, "no customary or conventional international law prohibits nations from employing nuclear weapons in armed conflict."

What with the anniversary and Bush in trouble

This is a little old, but what with the anniversary/remembrance of 9-11 tomorrow, and Bush's approval falling steadily, I thought I'd throw this up.


Also, I noticed that the Freedom Walk has only about 15,000 signed up. That's all they could draw for a free Clint Black concert with free advertising donated on all the local TV stations and in both newspapers?

Different pictures of Katrina from Alabama.

Received a whole bunch of these in an email from my friend Hoke. These are pictures from (central?) Alabama on the NE side of Katrina as it came in spawning tornados. I thought they were just amazing. And just for a little sense of scale, this is from waaayyy far away from the eye.

Quote of the day

Quote of the day from eschaton.

"... I went to Florida a few days after President Bush did to observe the damage from Hurricane Andrew. I had dealt with a lot of natural disasters as governor, including floods, droughts, and tornadoes, but I had never seen anything like this. I was surprised to hear complaints from both local officials and residents about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency was handling the aftermath of the hurricane. Traditionally, the job of FEMA director was given to a political supporter of the President who wanted some plum position but who had no experience with emergencies. I made a mental note to avoid that mistake if I won. Voters don't chose a President based on how he'll handle disasters, but if they're faced with one themselves, it quickly becomes the most important issue in their lives." Bill Clinton, My Life (p. 428)

Remember what it was like to have a smart president.

Oh, it's just a fantasy of those anti-war people.

Nope. This comes from the head of the national guard among others.

BAY ST. LOUIS, Mississippi (AP) -- The deployment of thousands of National Guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana in Iraq when Hurricane Katrina struck hindered those states' initial storm response, military and civilian officials said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that "arguably" a day or so of response time was lost due to the absence of the Mississippi National Guard's 155th Infantry Brigade and Louisiana's 256th Infantry Brigade, each with thousands of troops in Iraq.

Curious question. If the lack of a coherent resonse was the fault of the La governor, which I would dispute, isn't the fact that a third of her guard and most of their equipment being deployed in Iraq going to mess up the previously established response plans? If you take away the personnel and the equipment, just how is she supposed to respond?

Bush launches investigation into Katrina Relief

We all saw the headline:

Bush promises probe of response to disaster


Yeah, and OJ is still looking for Nicole's killer.


(Sorry, stole that joke from whatreallyhappened.com. It made me snort my drink.)

Bush sure responds quick when its rich white guys.

This doesn't happen without somebody getting on the phone to the President. Maybe he sould have had the same concern for the people trapped in New Orleans, but then I guess their speaker fees are lower.

The budget "shell game" that's gonna cut social programs

Brilliant blogging here on a budget "shell game" the Bush admin is gonna use to " slash $35 billion from mandatory spending over the next five years. Mandatory spending, to you and I, means little programs such as Medicaid, Food Stamps, Section 8 housing, Federal School Loans."

It's smart, it's deep, it's complete. Take a look.

WAPO recognizes Brown not qualified. Page A01.

The Washington Post finally printed the story which has been around for a week, that the three top FEMA positions are held by unqualified political appointees. Oh, and it's on the front page.
(and check out the Cheney Defense at the end.)

Five of eight top Federal Emergency Management Agency officials came to their posts with virtually no experience in handling disasters and now lead an agency whose ranks of seasoned crisis managers have thinned dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. ......

But scorching criticism has been aimed at FEMA, and it starts at the top with Brown, who has admitted to errors in responding to Hurricane Katrina and the flooding in New Orleans. The Oklahoma native, 50, was hired to the agency after a rocky tenure as commissioner of a horse sporting group by former FEMA director Joe M. Allbaugh, the 2000 Bush campaign manager and a college friend of Brown's.

Rhode, Brown's chief of staff, is a former television reporter who came to Washington as advance deputy director for Bush's Austin-based 2000 campaign and then the White House. He joined FEMA in April 2003 after stints at the Commerce Department and the U.S. Small Business Administration.

Altshuler is a former presidential advance man. His predecessor, Scott Morris, was a media strategist for Bush with the Austin firm Maverick Media. ......

Vice President Cheney also defended FEMA leaders, saying, "We're always trying to strike the right balance" between political appointees and "career professionals that fill the jobs underneath them."

And Time Mag gets in on the act, too.

The "Freedom Walk" isn't Free

Does anybody else appreciate the irony that the "Freedom Walk" isn't free?

Clips from the WaPo.

Organizers of the Pentagon's 9/11 memorial Freedom Walk on Sunday are taking extraordinary measures to control participation in the march and concert, with the route fenced off and lined with police and the event closed to anyone who does not register online by 4:30 p.m. today.

...a route that has not been specified but will be lined with four-foot-high snow fencing to keep it closed and "sterile," ....

The U.S. Park Police will have its entire Washington force of several hundred on duty and along the route, on foot, horseback and motorcycles and monitoring from above by helicopter. Officers are prepared to arrest anyone who joins the march or concert without a credential and refuses to leave, said Park Police Chief Dwight E. Pettiford. ....

"It's a permitted event. That means [organizers] are allowed to say who is in and who's out," ....

One restricted group will be the media, whose members will not be allowed to walk along the march route. Reporters and cameras are restricted to three enclosed areas along the route but are not permitted to walk alongside participants walking from the Pentagon, across the Memorial Bridge to the Mall.

On the bright side, everybody gets a t-shirt, so they can all march in their lines in uniform.

And should our government really be paying for this?

You have no rights - Padilla

Your rights are gone. A federal court has upheld that the executive branch of the government can imprison a US citizen detained on US soil indefinitely without trial, without disclosing any evidence, and even without charge.

I do not stand in defense of Mr. Padilla, I do not know whether what the government alleges is true or not. If there is any evidence, by all means, charge him, convict him, and execute him for treason. But when he was arrested, he had no bomb making plans, no weapon, no evidence of any kind other than the heresay of intelligence sources whose reliability cannot be questioned because there will be no trial.

Some source said he had plans, and now he is in a navy brig where he will remain at the whim of the president.

This is a US citizen. This could be you.

A federal appeals court Friday sided with the Bush administration and reversed a judge's order that the government charge or free "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the president has the authority to detain a U.S. citizen closely associated with al Qaida.

A federal judge in South Carolina had ruled in March that the government cannot hold Padilla indefinitely as an "enemy combatant," a designation President Bush gave him in 2002.

The government views Padilla as a militant who planned attacks on the United States, including with a "dirty bomb" radiological device.

The sad part is people will believe him.

From WSJ

Rep. Baker of Baton Rouge is overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." Baker explains later he didn't intend flippancy but has long wanted to improve low-income housing.

Riiiggghhhttt. It's all about the problems of public housing. Dude, I've been to Baton Rouge. I've met people like you. I know what you're saying, you Racist Bastard.

Still going on -

Just a quick reminder that Guantanamo is till going on.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Guantanamo Bay prisoners should be given the chance to prove in court that they have been mistakenly labeled as "enemy combatants" and have been unlawfully detained, their attorney said on Thursday.

"Since day one, these people have been saying you've got the wrong guys. They want a fair hearing to show that," attorney Thomas Wilner told a U.S. appeals court during more than two hours of arguments.

But Justice Department lawyer Gregory Katsas repeated the Bush administration's position that the prisoners were not entitled to any constitutional due process rights, and he defended the military tribunals set up to review their cases.

More than 500 prisoners are now being held at the U.S. military base in Cuba after the U.S. government designated them as enemy combatants. Only four have been charged with a crime.

US Getting ready for conflict with Iraqi troops.

Read this carefully. A contract dispute between a british contractor running the airport and the Iraqi government has lead to closure of the airport. The Iraqi government, the one we set up, the government that was "legitmately" elected, the arm of freedom and democracy we have created, is sending troops to the airport to try and re-open it.

And the US miltary is siding with the contractor, manning a checkpoint side-by-side with a british business preparing to face down the Iraqi government.

Incredible.

And for the Bio nerds out there

Just one of my odd interests. NYTimes:

NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept. 8 - Biologists warned Thursday that a virulent new strain of a previously controlled plant disease had emerged in East Africa and could wipe out 10 percent of the world's wheat production if its spread is not halted.

The disease, wheat rust, caused huge grain losses and even famines in the first half of the 20th century. The new strain was discovered in Uganda in 1999 and has since spread to Kenya and Ethiopia, damaging wheat crops there.

Evacuees being kept locked down in camps.

This isn't the first entry the left coaster has had on this, but as it cites several examples, I think it's pretty noteworthy.

The story is that at a few of the smaller evacuation sites, Utah and Colorado in this entry, the evacuees are not being allowed to leave the camps. They have been fenced in and are not allowed to leave. Aren't they American citizens?

Brilliant

I had an acquaintance who, in the days after Sept. 11, would remark to me that the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Flight 93 and the Pentagon had given her life "so much more meaning." I would hear this over and over: It's made me go back to church. It's made me love my family more. It's made me value my life. Okay, I guess whatever gets you there, but that's kind of, no, not kind of, that's very, very sick.

It later relates to Katrina being viewed the same way.

Right on!

From Daily Kos:

The administration said it was keeping us safe from terrorist attacks, or at least had a plan for responding to them; turns out, it can't even respond to disasters that have been broadly foreseen, and which come with days of prior warning. We need to find what's wrong, and fix it. Immediately.

That's only a "partisan" issue if you truly care about your party more than your country.

Gripping first hand account out of New Orleans

This isn't a horror story, just fairly personnel account of several days wandering looking for help and escape. Pretty interesting.

Link.

DHS kept the Red Cross out of New Orleans (Reprint)

I'm gonna summarize three previous posts because I think they are the most important thing I have to add in relation to Katrina. This is kind of a quick cut and paste job of previous posts so forgive me if its sloppy.

(And, I gotta say, from a table top excercise point of view, the decision to force evacuations by deprivation may be sound(I was somewhat convinced by the email from the Nola.Com guy at the end, but if you do not offer a mechanism to escape the deprivation for four or five days, it's criminal.)

First Post:

After thinking about this for a day, I believe, quite literally, that there is a case for manslaughter here. If the Red Cross statement below is true, FEMA and state officials knowingly, recklessly endangered the lives of those poor souls who were left in New Orleans.

(I'm cutting out exhibit A because I have seen some conflicting info indicating that the "Walmart Water" was simply redeployed.)

Exhibit B: From a Red Cross FAQ

• Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
• The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Now, let me get this straight. FEMA and the state Homeland Security Department were refusing the entry of food, water, and personnel because they were afraid the presence of the Red Cross would "keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."

So, in other words, if the people had food and water, they might not evacuate, so if we cut off their food and water, their imperiled lives would drive them to seek evacuation.

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know all the legal specifics of this form of manslaughter. But to you, doesn't this sound like reckless endangerment?

We need to find out who made that decision and that statement to the Red Cross. That person is responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths

Oh, and let's just add that the evacuees who were being driven out of New Orleans by their hunger and their thirst were given no means for evacuation. And in the case of the Superdome were kept from leaving at the point of a gun. Wanna bet the same sonofabitch issued that order?

And later I added Exhibit C:

Exhibit B: (From the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:)

As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.

Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.

"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders." .....

Though frustrated, Hosler understood the reasons. The goal is to move people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep them there.

So, again, from another source we have the claim that, in this case specifically named, the Homeland Security Dept actively stopped the delivery of food and water for the purpose of moving people out of the city.

AGAIN, the Homeland Security Dept actively denied life sustaining food and water into New Orleans so that the starving and dying would have to try to leave the city in order to survive.

THE HOMELAND SECURITY DEPT INTENTIONALLY STARVED THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS.


And then, they didn't try to help the people get out. We all saw the people waiting for the buses that took days to arrive, but what about this?

Mary Landrieu, the Democratic US senator from Louisiana, accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of having "dragging its feet" when Amtrak offered trains to evacuate victims.

So, THE HOMELAND SECURITY DEPT INTENTIONALLY STARVED THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS TO GET THEM TO WANT TO LEAVE THE CITY, AND THEN DENIED THEM THE MEANS TO LEAVE THE CITY.

Someone should go on trial for this. Someone should go to jail for this. and if this is true, someone should die for this.

And George Bush said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."


And lastly, I received and Email from one of the guys at NOLA.com who are covering this thing.

Got an email from Jon Donley from the Nola.com(Times Picayune linked website) countering my arguments about the Red Cross being held out of New Orleans intentionally by the Dept of Homeland Security.

It's obvious that this guy is exhausted, and it's not like he has a lot of time to write emails to me sitting in air conditioned Houston. So, I'm just going to print the part about the Red Cross in New Orleans, and, out of discretion, leave some of the personal details of his experience out. (Jon, if you feel that I need to print the second paragraph, tell me and it'll be up in a second.)

Please believe me that this guy has been through hell. And that his on the ground experience gives him some real credibility.

You're right, we're mad. But not about this. I can't imagine anything more
foolish than allowing the Red Cross into New Orleans. I'm afraid that you
don't understand that anyone left in New Orleans is going to die. They can
die hungry, or they can die fed, but they are going to die. I don't have
time to explain this to you, but allowing the Red Cross in would kill
people. Many people are holding out, thinking that if they just get food
and water delivered, they can avoid leaving New Orleans. Anything that
encourages that is going to kill people. The Red Cross should - and is -
focusing on the vast refugee camps and shelters spread from here to San
Antonio. People are dying there, too . . . and the Red Cross is stretched
to the limit feeding them, giving them basic survival services

That's a good rebuttal.

Specifically, I was writing about the absence of the Red Cross in the early days of the disaster before the mass evacuations had begun, not at present, but I find it difficult to argue.

The fatalism in this has struck me hard. I can't imagine what it's like there after a week.

Mike

So that's where we are so far in this.

I just don't know.

Maybe it is respect for the dead, but I can't ignore the political ramifications here of months of bodies being shown, reminding people again and again of the fact that the response killed people. I guess it's important not to shock the Bush supporters into thinking.

NEW ORLEANS — The U.S. agency leading Hurricane Katrina rescue efforts said Tuesday that it does not want the news media to photograph the dead as they are recovered.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency, heavily criticized for its slow response to the devastation caused by the hurricane, rejected journalists' requests to accompany rescue boats searching for storm victims.

An agency spokeswoman said space was needed on the rescue boats.

"We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media," the spokeswoman said in an e-mail.

At least the Nazis/Romans were organized.

Just a quick aside. One of my great fears in the aftermath of the 9-11 security push is that this country would be pushed towards a true facist state. But after the apparent complete waste of "preparedness" funding after 9-11, the complete debacle of the US not being able to occupy a nation of 1/12 it's size in population, and god knows what fraction of it's economy, military, and technology, and now the inability/ineptitude to care for it's own people in the wake of Katrina, I feel safe in saying that this administration is not capable of forging a fascist state.

Right now, it appears they are barely able to organize anything more than a political rally. (it's still on by the way.)

There was a time when America would arrive as a great armada of benevolence, greeted with a sense of warm hope.

Now the US pulls up in a clown car and all the administration flacks tumble out. Only these clowns have guns.

No, we are not in any danger of fascism under the Bush administration, that would require planning and execution which seem far beyond the current bozos falling out of their tiny car.

But I fear this failure does reflect the conception that this blog was named for:

That the great American Empire has crested, and that all that is left is for the wealthy to loot whatever they can before they leave.

As that perception falls upon the people, then we will have the real risk of fascism, and then we will regret the foundations that have been laid.

I'm proud of my City - Part three

Quickly, on Monday Robert Eckels, basically our county head which is a pretty big post down here, said that in the first five days, we had had 24,000 individuals volunteer to help at the Astrodome complex. I think that's pretty good. I really can't begin to describe the sentiment down here, it really is all hands to the pumps, we need to help our neighbors.

And there have been a few organizational problems, but at least at this early stage, I think I can say without reservation that we're truly doing our best.

So, I'm gonna put up this highly flattering article from the BBC.

Houston gave the US the chance to catch its breath.

That was the considered opinion of Robert Eckels, the man in charge of the city's relief effort as he sat on the edge of a stage that had been graced just minutes earlier by the presence of former Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush senior. .......

All Texas-bound buses came through here and seldom can the smog-caked downtown high rises have been such a welcoming sight for visitors.

This was their guarantee of water, food, medical care and shelter. So appealing did Texas become that almost 250,000 Katrina survivors headed here.

Those who could filled hotels and motels, while those who could not found refuge in sports complexes and convention centres. ......

Add in the neighbouring arena and a convention centre about three miles (5km) away and you have a town with a population of around 25,000 which has sprung up in days.

Coping with the influx has presented Houston with both challenges and opportunities.

Now that the immediate needs of the evacuees have been met, the city is moving to open up its schools and hospitals to the survivors as well as urging residents to allow the evacuees to use their spare rooms and empty properties.

Long-term issues

It is a burden the city's residents appear to relish. They have whole-heartedly welcomed their fellow Americans in a wholly impressive display of support.

For days, traffic on Kirby Drive, the main road that runs alongside the Astrodome, was packed nose to tail and thousands of Houstonians came out to volunteer their help.

Others came along with carloads of toiletries or toys or clothes, while two of the occupants of one vehicle in front of me jumped out and simply handed money to evacuees who were walking along the kerb.

It has been that sort of time in Houston, people pitching in as they can, officials trying to solve problems they had not even imagined.

But now that the evacuees' immediate needs have been met, attention is shifting to longer- term needs. And though Houston has devised plans to send some of the evacuees to other parts of the country - including onto cruise ships - many are reluctant to move on just yet.

Many do not want to make firm decisions about where they want to live. As a result many evacuees may remain in Houston longer than planned.

That would undoubtedly put pressure on the abilities of officials to devise new solutions as well as asking far bigger questions about the effect that the influx of tens of thousands will have on the social fabric of the city.

Lean, we're here.

Wow - NYTimes

NYTimes board editorial.

With the size and difficulty of the task of rescuing and rebuilding New Orleans and other Gulf Coast areas still unfolding, it seemed early to talk about investigating how this predicted cataclysm had been allowed to occur and why the government's response was so slow and inept. Until yesterday, that is, when President Bush blithely announced at a photo-op cabinet meeting that he, personally, was going to "find out what went right and what went wrong." We can't imagine a worse idea.

No administration could credibly investigate such an immense failure on its own watch. And we have learned through bitter experience - the Abu Ghraib nightmare is just one example - that when this administration begins an internal investigation, it means a whitewash in which no one important is held accountable and no real change occurs.

and a little Friedman

If the Bush-Cheney team seemed to be the right guys to deal with Osama, they seem exactly the wrong guys to deal with Katrina - and all the rot and misplaced priorities it's exposed here at home.

These are people so much better at inflicting pain than feeling it, so much better at taking things apart than putting them together, so much better at defending "intelligent design" as a theology than practicing it as a policy.

All kinds of news.

First the good news. The levees appear to be fixed and holding, the pumps are pumping, and the water seems to be slowly receding. This is great news!!
And one quick editorial comment, I'm about as strong of an environmentalist as you're going to find, but please quit covering this removal of water as an environmental story. Yes, there will be significant environmental damage, as I have been reminded by both CNN and MSNBC tonight, as the water is pumped out, first in Pontchartrain and the throughout the gulf coast where I live. But I don't care. Get the water out of New Orleans. That is the priority.

Now, a quick catchall. There are alot of stories breaking tonight.

The government's disaster chief waited until hours after Hurricane Katrina had already struck the Gulf Coast before asking his boss to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security employees to the region — and gave them two days to arrive, according to internal documents.

Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, sought the approval from Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff roughly five hours after Katrina made landfall on Aug. 29. Brown said that among duties of these employees was to "convey a positive image" about the government's response for victims. .....

Brown's memo told employees that among their duties, they would be expected to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public."

and this:

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?"
As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency. .....
But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

and this from the AP:

Even as Katrina was bearing down on the Gulf Coast that Sunday night and early Monday, Aug. 28-29, and the National Hurricane Center was warning of growing danger, the White House didn't alter the president's plans to fly from his Texas ranch to the West to promote a new Medicare prescription drug benefit.

By the time Bush landed in Arizona that Monday, the storm was unleashing its fury on Louisiana and Mississippi. The president inserted into his speech only a brief promise of prayers and federal help.

He continued his schedule in California, and he didn't decide until the next day that he should return to Washington. But it took him another day to get there, as he flew back to Texas to spend another night at his home before leaving for the White House.

Once the president was in Washington, the criticism only intensified. ......

Later in Biloxi, Miss., Bush tried to comfort two stunned women wandering their neighborhood clutching Hefty bags, looking in vain for something to salvage from the rubble of their home. He kept insisting they could find help at a Salvation Army center down the street, even after another bystander had informed him it had been destroyed.

And finally, Sen Barbara Mikulski has already said this, now a second.

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar today called for President Bush to seek the resignation of Michael Brown as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Update: an Email from New Orleans

Got an email from Jon Donley from the Nola.com(Times Picayune linked website) countering my arguments about the Red Cross being held out of New Orleans intentionally by the Dept of Homeland Security.

It's obvious that this guy is exhausted, and it's not like he has a lot of time to write emails to me sitting in air conditioned Houston. So, I'm just going to print the part about the Red Cross in New Orleans, and, out of discretion, leave some of the personal details of his experience out. (Jon, if you feel that I need to print the second paragraph, tell me and it'll be up in a second.)

Please believe me that this guy has been through hell. And that his on the ground experience gives him some real credibility.

You're right, we're mad. But not about this. I can't imagine anything more
foolish than allowing the Red Cross into New Orleans. I'm afraid that you
don't understand that anyone left in New Orleans is going to die. They can
die hungry, or they can die fed, but they are going to die. I don't have
time to explain this to you, but allowing the Red Cross in would kill
people. Many people are holding out, thinking that if they just get food
and water delivered, they can avoid leaving New Orleans. Anything that
encourages that is going to kill people. The Red Cross should - and is -
focusing on the vast refugee camps and shelters spread from here to San
Antonio. People are dying there, too . . . and the Red Cross is stretched
to the limit feeding them, giving them basic survival services

That's a good rebuttal.

Specifically, I was writing about the absence of the Red Cross in the early days of the disaster before the mass evacuations had begun, not at present, but I find it difficult to argue.

The fatalism in this has struck me hard. I can't imagine what it's like there after a week.

Mike

Comments?

Clips from the white house press briefing

Clips from the whitehouse press briefing today via Editor and Publisher.

If you're a political nerd like me, you find these interesting. This is just one exchange, It seems like the whole thing went like this. (Oh, and by the way, answer the question damnit!!!! If we're going to put off an investigation into what went wrong in the Katrina relief effort, how are we going to "learn the lessons" to be prepared for a terror attack if it happens before you get around to your investigation?)

Q Well, let's talk about it. Are you saying the President is -- are you saying that the President is confident that his administration is prepared to adequately, confidently secure the American people in the event of a terrorist attack of a level that we have not seen? And based on what does he have that confidence?

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes, and that's what he made clear earlier today, that obviously we want to look and learn lessons from a major catastrophe of this nature.

Q Yes, but you're telling us today there will be time for that somewhere down the road. Well, what if it happens tomorrow?

MR. McCLELLAN: We can engage in this blame-gaming going on and I think that's what you're getting --

Q No, no. That's a talking point, Scott, and I think most people who are watching this --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's a fact. I mean, some are wanting to engage in that, and we're going to remain focused --

Q I'm asking a direct question. Is he confident --

MR. McCLELLAN: We're going to remain focused on the people.

Q -- that he can secure the American people in the event of a major terrorist attack?

MR. McCLELLAN: We are securing the American people by staying on the offensive abroad and working to spread freedom and democracy in the Middle East.

Q That's a talking point. That's a talking point.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, that's a fact.

A great article on Katrina failings

I love the BBC. I know, you poor people of England pay a hefty price to subsidize it, but it has played such a significant role in history. In how many countries have an occupied or oppressed people, clustered around jerry rigged radio sets, received good factual news reporting on short wave from the World Service. It is one of your great gifts to the world.

Okay, enough about that. But the BBC has a pretty good, fairly comprehensive piece on the failings in the lead up and aftermath of Katrina. It seems pretty balanced to me, and as all the Bush admin/anti Bush admin stuff starts to get thrown around, this offers a pretty good reference point.

Look here.

And let me just say here that my issue is generally with the DHS on down. We can argue as to whether Bush should've stopped vacationing and gotten involved sooner, and we can argue about the cuts to the levee budgets or restructuring of FEMA, not good, but, in the end, that was a political decision.

I do take significant issue with the appointment of unqualified people to key posts at FEMA. That was key in this disaster.

But generally speaking, the villians in this piece, or at least the federal villians, start at Chertoff and go down a couple of rungs. Quite obviously, the people on the ground have worked their asses off, and I would guess their bosses and their bosses' bosses have probably done very well. But the top of FEMA, the political appointees, there has been incredible incompetence.

As to State and local. It's seems to me that gov. Blanco has made some mistakes, both in tactics and presentation, although with a greater resource flow, I don't think they would have been as significant.

As to Ray Nagin, I think he's done a hell of a job considering the situation he's in. Working in New Orleans with no power or communications, more or less without sleep, he and his staff having suffered tremendous personnel losses, and no significant help from the outside world arriving for days(plural.) I can't even imagine how they kept going. In my book, the local officials did everything they could manage after the levee break.

I know you disagree with me, so sound off in the COMMENTS. I'm more than willing to change my mind in the face of sound arguments.

Mike

Michael Brown isn't the only one not qualified at FEMA..

Think progress has the bios of the the Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff under Michael Brown at Fema. Both were apparently Bush campaign personnel who were placed in FEMA as their payoff.

LINK

(Word of warning, Think Progress is pretty left, so although this is true, remember that their presentation comes from a pretty hard angle.)

More horror from Katrina

The US authorities were also castigated by British bus driver Ged Scott, from Wallasey, Merseyside, who was on holiday in the New Orleans area.

He stayed in the Ramada Hotel during and after the devastation with his wife, Sandra, and seven-year-old son Ronan. At one stage, Mr Scott, 36, had to wade through filthy water to barricade the hotel doors against looters.

He told the Liverpool Daily Post: "I couldn't describe how bad the authorities were. Just little things like taking photographs of us, as we are standing on the roof waving for help, for their own little snapshot albums.

"At one point, there were a load of girls on the roof of the hotel saying 'Can you help us?' and the policemen said 'Show us what you've got' and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts. When the girls refused, they said 'Fine' and motored off down the road in their boat."

Rescuers find 22 bodies lashed together in St. Bernard Parish

By Tommy Tomlinson

Knight Ridder Newspapers

VIOLET, La. - The 22 people died together.

Police believe they tried to escape the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina lashed to one another with a rope.

Rescuers found them last week in this village just east of New Orleans.

No one has identified them yet. No one has tried to figure out who they were or how they knew each other or how far they had come before a rescue crew found them wrapped around a pole. ........

So Sheriff Jack Stephens can't give a lot of details about deaths in the parish. What he has is numbers.

Thirty died over at St. Rita Nursing Home. Eleven died down at the hospital at Chalmette.

About 100 bodies have been found in the parish so far. Stephens says the final count could be five times that many.

(and again, this is behind a registration wall, so use the bugmenot.com link to the right to get a username and password.)

More evidence for the manslaughter trial.

I really think some authority should be prepping charges, or at least conducting a pretty serious investigation. And I don't mean a congressional panel or committee or whatever, I mean some one like the New Orleans DA(unlikely in the current circumstances) or the Louisiana state authorities.

See earlier post for the first set of evidence.

I'm not kidding. Link this with the earlier evidence, and it is clear that someone ordered food and water as well as means of evacuation knowingly withheld from the dying citizens of New Orleans.

If this isn't reckless endangerment, or criminal indifference, what is?

Exhibit C:

As the National Guard delivered food to the New Orleans convention center yesterday, American Red Cross officials said that federal emergency management authorities would not allow them to do the same.

Other relief agencies say the area is so damaged and dangerous that they doubted they could conduct mass feeding there now.

"The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans," said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.

"Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders." .....

Though frustrated, Hosler understood the reasons. The goal is to move people out of an uninhabitable city, and relief operations might keep them there.

So, again, from another source we have the claim that, in this case specifically named, the Homeland Security Dept actively stopped the delivery of food and water for the purpose of moving people out of the city.

AGAIN, the Homeland Security Dept actively denied life sustaining food and water into New Orleans so that the starving and dying would have to try to leave the city in order to survive.

THE HOMELAND SECURITY DEPT INTENTIONALLY STARVED THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS.


And then, they didn't try to help the people get out. We all saw the people waiting for the buses that took days to arrive, but what about this?

Mary Landrieu, the Democratic US senator from Louisiana, accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency of having "dragging its feet" when Amtrak offered trains to evacuate victims.

So, THE HOMELAND SECURITY DEPT INTENTIONALLY STARVED THE PEOPLE OF NEW ORLEANS TO GET THEM TO WANT TO LEAVE THE CITY, AND THEN DENIED THEM THE MEANS TO LEAVE THE CITY.

Someone should go on trial for this. Someone should go to jail for this. and if this is true, someone should die for this.

And George Bush said, "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."

Rove Stage Two Defense - Divide

Just warning you, you're gonna start to see it soon. Rove stage two defense will be to portray all criticism of the failures of FEMA as the provence of Democrats. Therefore, anyone who criticizes the administration's response will be asked, "are you like Michael Moore or Barbara Streisand?" The easy way in which the Rove message machine falls into this so many times it makes me sick. (Oh, and by the way, wasn't he supposed to be fired if any member of the administration was "involved" in the leaking of Plame.)

The key to this tactic is that there are so many centrists who respond to the, "do you agree with the positions of the extremist elements of the "tree huggers" who believe that we should destroy all industrialized society, or not? And if not, then you must be with me."

Therefore I have a mandate, your mandate, to cut down any forest, completely remove any of the local mercury emissions limits, or, let's say, change the laws to allow Louisiana developers to destroy all the wetlands south or New Orleans.

See how easy it is to rhetorically claim the middle.

And that's going to be stage two of the unconscionable defense of the unconscionable unconsciousness that was the New Orleans relief efforts.

Do you want to be like Ted Kennedy? No? Then obviously you agree with our side that all the criticism is just the democrats trying to capitalize on New Orlean's misfortune to attack the president. And you don't want to be like Ted Kennedy, do you?

This is the white hat/black hat nature of the Rove machine, leaving aside the dirty tricks, of course.

I have seen the first ripples of this defense/attack. A few "unnamed officials" type articles. This is usually followed by a few congressional leaders pushing the line, leading to the flowering on the Sunday talk shows when all the Republican guests just happen to spontaneously use the exact same words to express the exact same point. It's generally got a gestation somewhere between a week and ten days, and then, once present will be repeated until the polling turns.

The only thing that can derail this is for members of the Republican party to refuse the talking points. I fear that even with a dereliction as severe as letting people die without water, there will be few republicans brave enough to stand up. They know that in the era of custom tailored districts, their political postions no longer have any great bearing on whether or not they are reelected. It has become far more perilous to fight the district-drawing machine than to fight the people.

I just hope that some republican has the virtue and the fortitude to break the talking points, to stand up and speak for the victims. Would someone from the right PLEASE stand up for the victims. Because they can't speak for themselves. They are living in America, and they are poor and black and dead.

They refused to let the Red Cross help.

The Dept of Homeland Security refused to let the Red Cross into NO to help (see here and here) so that people would be forced to evacuate the city.

Looks like it worked, eh? We saw the pictures of old people in wheel chairs and barely able to walk, I'm sure they all made it out, and now we've got at least one story from the other end of the age spectrum.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

Yeah, I'm sure all the abandoned children understood that the lack of food and water was for their own good, to get them to leave the city. This is really a miracle when you think what must've been involved. Just makes me wonder how many of the old and young that policy killed.

When Patronage Kills

Michael Brown's qualifications are hightlighted in this Miami Herald piece which should be titled

When Political Patronage Kills

(If you don't have an account at miami.com, click on the bugmenot.com link to the right. (second down) It's remarkably useful if you just want to read one article on a site.)

(see the comments at the end for another rant at the massive ineptitude of Brown/Fema's response.)

WASHINGTON - From failed Republican congressional candidate to ousted ''czar'' of an Arabian horse association, there was little in Michael D. Brown's background to prepare him for the fury of Hurricane Katrina.

But as the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brown now faces furious criticism of the federal response to the disaster that wiped out New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast. He provoked some of it himself when he conceded that FEMA didn't know that thousands of evacuees were trapped at New Orleans' convention center without food or water.

''He's done a hell of a job, because I'm not aware of any Arabian horses being killed in this storm,'' said Kate Hale, former Miami-Dade emergency management chief who oversaw emergency response during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. ``The world that this man operated in and the focus of this work does not in any way translate to this. He does not have the experience.'' (Quite obvious what the Miami Herald thinks of Brown's performance - Mike)

Brown ran for Congress in 1988 and won 27 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Glenn English, and spent the 1990s as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating. .......

Brown's ticket to FEMA was Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager and an old friend of Brown's in Oklahoma.

Brown told several association officials that if Bush were elected, he'd be in line for a good job. When Allbaugh, who managed Bush's campaign, took over FEMA in 2001, he took Brown with him as general counsel.

Brown practiced law in Enid, Okla., a city of about 45,000, during the 1980s and was counsel to a group of businesses run by a well-known Enid family. Before that, he worked for the city of Edmond, Okla., and was an aide in the state Legislature. .......

''He just wouldn't follow instruction,'' said Bill Pennington, another former (Arabian Horse)association president. ``Mike was bullheaded, and he was gonna do it his way. Period.''

At FEMA, Brown rose from general counsel to deputy director within a year. Bush named him to succeed Allbaugh in February 2003. With FEMA now part of the Department of Homeland Security, Brown's title is undersecretary for emergency preparedness and response.

Brown's old friend Andrew Lester, an Oklahoma lawyer, said the progression from horse shows to hurricanes was natural.

''A lot of what he had to do was stand in the breach in difficult, controversial situations,'' Lester said. ``Which I think would well prepare him for his work at FEMA.'' .....

In Mobile, Ala., on Friday, Bush said the response to Katrina was unsatisfactory. But he had nothing but praise for FEMA's director.

''Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job,'' the president said.

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said.

And that was on Friday, before any help had come to the convention center, before the national guard had started "reclaiming" New Orleans, after only 1,200 people had been evacuated from the Superdome.

Of course, that was four days after the hurricane had hit, and three and a half days after the levee broke. So in the three and a half days when CNN, MSNBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, AP, AFP, Reuters, NYTimes, WaPo, BBC, ITV, SKYnews, German and French TV, and innumerable other print reporters, were able to enter and travel around New Orleans in SUV's and pickups, there was no aid or government presence inside New Orleans because the water was too high.

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said. "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," the president said.

A Case for Manslaughter - Literally.

(one of many who died waiting for water at the New Orleans convention center)

After thinking about this for a day, I believe, quite literally, that there is a case for manslaughter here. If the Red Cross statement below is true, FEMA and state officials knowingly, recklessly endangered the lives of those poor souls who were left in New Orleans.





Exhibit A: Broussard on Meet the Press referenced above

Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn't need them. This was a week ago. FEMA--we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, "Come get the fuel right away." When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. "FEMA says don't give you the fuel." Yesterday--yesterday--FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, "No one is getting near these lines." Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America--American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn't be in this crisis.

Exhibit B: From a Red Cross FAQ

• Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.
• The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

Now, let me get this straight. FEMA and the state Homeland Security Department were refusing the entry of food, water, and personnel because they were afraid the presence of the Red Cross would "keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city."

So, in other words, if the people had food and water, they might not evacuate, so if we cut off their food and water, their imperiled lives would drive them to seek evacuation.

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know all the legal specifics of this form of manslaughter. But to you, doesn't this sound like reckless endangerment?

We need to find out who made that decision and that statement to the Red Cross. That person is responsible for hundreds, possibly thousands, of deaths

Oh, and let's just add that the evacuees who were being driven out of New Orleans by their hunger and their thirst were given no means for evacuation. And in the case of the Superdome were kept from leaving at the point of a gun. Wanna bet the same sonofabitch issued that order?

Find them, try them, and hang them.

You need to see this. Absolutely, Positively.

Please, please, please. You need to see this video. I implore you. Click anywhere on this entry. It's the Jefferson Parish president on Meet the Press.

Watch it all the way through. I promise you will never forget it.



Here's a link to another, lower quality/lower bandwidth, source in case that one doesn't work because it's too busy. It's been overloaded occasionally throughout the day.

If you criticize the response, you want people to die.

Thought I'd move this up from it's update status because I think it's pretty significant.

A third defense has come forward today for the atrocious response of FEMA, (see Chertoff on Meet the Press) expect to see it spread. It runs roughly(paraphrase), "there will be plenty of time for after action analysis; we're focused on what we have to do in the next hours. Do you want us to spend our time seeking accountability?"

So, our choice is accountability at the cost of ceasing all relief operations?

So, the third defense summed up is, don't bother us with criticism unless you want people to die.

aka. people who criticize this administration want people to die.

(for reference, see Bush comments on people who are against the Iraq war giving succor to our enemies.)

Bastards.

UPDATE: I had completely forgotten that if you had opposed the patriot act, you were making a terror attack more likely.

Just some images published in the foreign press.

Just some images I've come across in the last couple of days.

How much has Bush donated to the Red Cross?

I would bet that Bush has probably donated a fair amount to the Red Cross, I would love to see someone ask that question, though. I have no reason to think that he or those in the cabinet haven't done their share, but I just would be curious to see, in relation to their income, what the top people in the administration have thrown in the hat.

Just curious.

Two German TV stories confirm Operation Photo Op

From Laura Rozen, brackets and comments are hers.

[Now citing Claudia Rueggeberg directly from the video:]
Along his [Bush] travel route aid units removed debris and recovered corpses. Then Bush left and along with him, all aid troops left too. The situation in Biloxi remains unchanged, nothing has arrived, everything is still needed."

(I don´t know if aid units is the right term. The German word "Hilfstruppen" could be literally translated as "aid troops" or "recovery or support troops/units". It means here units trying to help after a disaster.)

On another channel and another TV news show.

On the last state of things here's Christine Adelhardt live from Biloxi

2 minutes ago the President drove past in his convoi. But what has happened in Biloxi all day long is truly unbelievable. Suddenly recovery units appeared, suddenly bulldozers were there, those hadn't been seen here all the days before, and this in an area, in which it really wouldn't be necessary to do a big clean up, because far and wide nobody lives here anymore, the people are more inland in the city. The President travels with a press baggage [big crew]. This press baggage got very beautiful pictures which are supposed to say, that the President was here and help is on the way, too. The extent of the natural disaster shocked me, but the extent of the staging is shocking me at least the same way. With that back to Hamburg.

The Bush political defense

After watching blurbs from the morning news/interview shows, it seems the Bush administration's defense on the deadly poor response to hurricane Katrina comes down to two basic arguments.

1) The claim that no one could have forseen the level of disaster in New Orleans; this is often being described using the two disasters motif, the hurricane being the first and the levee break being the second. I won't go into all the details refuting this, but it is quite plain that all the previous disaster planning/modeling/exercises included the flooding of New Orleans through the levees. Publicly available, there are countless articles discussing the problem and probability of a levee break in a large storm, as well as shelves of scientific papers analyzing the impact. I won't go into all of them here, but if you're really interested, leave your email in comments and I'll respond in more detail.

2) The claim that the whole "coordination problem" comes down to the governor of Louisiana failing in her duty. The best counter argument I can make is this, from the Whitehouse.gov website. It states quite clearly that FEMA is to take the role of coodination of relief efforts.

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, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe 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.

Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency. Debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, will be provided at 75 percent Federal funding.

Representing FEMA, Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary for Emergency Preparedness and Response, Department of Homeland Security, named William Lokey as the Federal Coordinating Officer for Federal recovery operations in the affected area.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: FEMA (202) 646-4600.

Oh, by the way, the statement was issued for immediate release on Aug 27, before the storm even hit.

The truth is, Micheal Brown was a political appointee who was given a patronage post as the head of FEMA. That political decision has killed people.

I wonder if he'll get a Presidential Medal of Freedom like "slam-dunk case on WMD in Iraq" Tenet or "let's disband the Iraqi army and police ourselves" Bremer.

UPDATE: A third defense has come forward today, (see Chertoff on Meet the Press) expect to see it spread. It runs roughly, "there will be plenty of time for after action analysis; we're focused on what we have to do in the next hours. Do you want us to spend our time seeking accountability? Some things have worked very well, and some things that haven't."

So, the third defense summed up is, don't bother us with criticism unless you want people to die. aka. people who criticize this administration want people to die.(see Bush comments on people who are against the Iraq war giving sustenance to our enemies.)

Bastards.

Cause, after all, it's about you Pres. Bush

This is what's wrong. It's all about you and your political standing, Mr. Bush. Don't you understand that that's your tragic flaw which has so exacerbated the suffering of a quarter million people? Just for once, can you accept that it's not about you?

NYTIMES

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 - Faced with one of the worst political crises of his administration, President Bush abruptly overhauled his September schedule on Saturday as the White House scrambled to gain control of a situation that Republicans said threatened to undermine Mr. Bush's second-term agenda and the party's long-term ambitions.

In a sign of the mounting anxiety at the White House, Mr. Bush made a rare Saturday appearance in the Rose Garden before live television cameras to announce that he was dispatching additional active-duty troops to the Gulf Coast. He struck a more somber tone than he had at times on Friday during a daylong tour of the disaster region, when he had joked at the airport in New Orleans about the fun he had had in his younger days in Houston. His demeanor on Saturday was similar to that of his most somber speeches after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"The magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities," said Mr. Bush, slightly exaggerating the stricken land area. "The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable." .....

The last-minute overhaul of the president's plans reflected what analysts and some Republicans said was a long-term threat to Mr. Bush's presidency created by the perception that the White House had failed to respond to the crisis. Several said the political fallout over the hurricane could complicate a second-term agenda that includes major changes to Social Security, the tax code and the immigration system.

"This is very much going to divert the agenda," said Tom Rath, a New Hampshire Republican with ties to the White House. "Some of this is momentary. I think the Bush capital will be rapidly replenished if they begin to respond here."

Donald P. Green, a professor of political science at Yale University, said: "The possibility for very serious damage to the administration exists. The unmistakable conclusion one would draw from this was this was a massive administration failure."

And Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, urged Mr. Bush to quickly propose a rebuilding plan for New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, arguing that an ambitious gesture could restore his power in Congress.