Just the news we all needed
-- another Supreme Court vacancy. Gary Farber and others forward reports that Chief Justice Rehnquist has died. R.I.P. Well, both he and O'Connor voted for the majority in Bush v. Gore, so really stupid, disgraceful 6-3 or worse decisions may remain out of reach for now.

Somewhere, Mike Brown is thinking, "I might be the luckiest college roommate ever, after all."

Somewhere else, Bush is thinking, "I might be the luckiest president ever, after all."

Should a certifiable public screwup like him get to make a decision like this? No. Too bad for us. I wonder if all that vaunted new press rebelliousness will carry over to scrutininzing his Supreme Court choice(s). Nah. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:39:00 PM -- |    

 
Hooah! That's the spirit!
There's an insurgency to fight, the Army Times reports:

This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. "We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control."[...]

While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes."

(Via Making Light; emphases added) Be sure and not let anyone just walk out, now. Keep 'em corralled and surrounded, remove the civilians, zero in on the hostiles, starve 'em out.

These people are acting like New Orleans is the Warsaw Ghetto, and we're the... oops, sorry. I nearly did a no-no and pulled a Godwin's Law violation, and then where would we all be? I might have to make a sniveling apology on the Senate floor or something.

Category 5: full blown rage posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:09:00 PM -- |    

 
Reporter: And what do you call this government?
Bush: The Aristocrats! posted by Thomas Nephew at 4:01:00 PM -- |    

 
Of bathtubs and bankruptcy



Via half the blogs I read, really, but originally via Making Light and Max Sawicki's "Drown Grover Norquist in a bathtub" in particular.*

Sawicki calls for at least temporary waivers for the bankruptcy bill, and red-lighting the estate tax repeal, which will have a huge negative effect on charitable giving at the worst possible time. He also mentions changes to the highway and energy bills, state and local fiscal relief, and more. And he has a September 2 letter from Grover Norquist urging the Senate to hold the line on the estate tax, Katrina be damned.


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* The designer is actually "highacidity," a dKos blogger, who's setting up a Cafe Press poster/t-shirt sale of it with profits to go to Katrina victims. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:59:00 AM -- |    

 
Live by the photo op, die by the photo op, II
Bush figuratively, but Gulf coast residents probably less so. David Pace of Associated Press reported reported on Louisiana Congressman Charlie Melancon's futile efforts to see or get in touch with the president. The congressman was unable to get a security clearance to see Bush in person, and had no luck contacting him by phone either:

After waiting 90 minutes Friday while a U.S. marshal using a satellite phone repeatedly tried, and failed, to contact Bush's plane - located just 300 yards away at New Orleans' Armstrong airport - a disgusted Melancon left.

'After an hour and a half of that, and two hours to get down there, I am now back on my way, without seeing the president, not accomplishing anything in my mind today. I've wasted time while people are dying in South Louisiana,' he said in a telephone interview. 'It's not personal to the president. It's just that this whole thing has been handled terribly.'
Melancon said the communications problems that kept him from meeting with Bush are symptomatic of the problems that have plagued the slow-moving federal response to the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

In St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, just south of New Orleans, victims of the hurricane are still waiting for food and water and for buses to escape the floodwaters, Melancon said. And for the entire time Bush was in the state, the congressman said, a ban on helicopter flights further stalled the delivery of food and supplies.

Via Arthur Silber, via digby. I found no confirmation of a routine statewide ban in the Wikipedia entry for "Marine One," but found numerous anecdotes about restricted air space in the vicinity of the president -- bad enough when he was in any of the afflicted areas. Bush should of course have waived any such rules, or found a different venue for his televised expressions of concern.


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UPDATE, 9/3: An August 5, 2005 FAA fact sheet explains "TFR"s -- temporary flight restrictions: When the president or the vice president flies, their planes receive priority handling by air traffic control. However, Air Force One and Two receive standard en-route separation from other aircraft.
At the request of the U.S. Secret Service, the FAA can restrict airspace around locations where the president is visiting for TFRs of up to 30 nautical miles in radius and heights of 18,000 feet. Generally, all flights that have not received special security vetting by the Transportation Security Agency are prohibited within these TFRs." 30 nautical miles is about 34 miles. Assuming there was such a request, here is a map of the rough area subject to a TFR while the president was at the New Orleans airport.
UPDATE, 9/4:The New Orleans Times Picayune adds details: "Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said." Via Gary Farber. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:00:00 AM -- |    

 
Hey CNN, get your own freaking helicopters
Assuming this "Narcosphere" report -- U.S. Customs' hurricane-relief Blackhawks pulling press duty -- is accurate... um, well, I've already exceeded my daily allotment of online asterisk fig leafs: :

The crews for three U.S. Customs Blackhawk helicopters stationed at Crestview Airport in Florida are 'livid' because they have not been directed to provide full-time support for the ongoing hurricane-relief effort in the nation's Gulf Coast region, according to Mark Conrad, a former regional Internal Affairs supervisor for U.S. Customs.

Conrad says instead of helping people left desperate in the wake of Katrina's wrath, the Blackhawk's actually were slated to transport a CNN news crew to take video shots of those people.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection leadership in Miami is behind the press-play strategy, Conrad says.

'They have three Blackhawk helicopters and crew just sitting there doing nothing, just so they can look good for CNN. The crew is livid,' Conrad says. 'They made one trip earlier and flew over Biloxi, (Mississippi) where there are dead bodies everywhere. Those are highly trained crews and Blackhawk helicopters can carry a lot of food and water. They could be doing something.'

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official familiar with the Blackhawk operation in Florida confirms Conrad's report. The official, who asked not to be named, says the Blackhawks were flown in from as far away as San Diego to supposedly assist with hurricane-relief efforts. They were stationed in Florida primarily to assure adequate refueling services.

Shrillness increasing to Category 4 level. posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:10:00 PM -- |    

 
Hang in there
Verbatim from Steve Perry of the City Pages "Blotter"-- Bush caught on live TV feed meeting Katrina survivors:

This morning I've been watching the WDSU live stream online, and for most of the past hour they've been patched over in error from their broadcast to their raw satellite feeds. One feed of about five minutes or so in length showed George W. Bush walking down a road--in Mississippi, I'm guessing--and greeting a pair of survivors, a woman and (seemingly) her daughter. The mother was nearly hysterical as she described losing her boyfriend. The president hugged them, encouraged them to leave and go to a shelter. When the woman persisted, the president hugged her again. Shutters could be heard snapping, and no doubt the pictures are already hitting the wire.

And here were his parting words of counsel, comfort, leadership, and hope to this absolutely distraught woman, picked up clearly on the satellite feed:

'All right. Hang in there.'

Live by the photo op, die by the photo op. I feel myself becoming very shrill. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:30:00 PM -- |    

 
Bush yuks it up while New Orleans burns
White House press release -- President Arrives in Alabama, Briefed on Hurricane Katrina:

"The good news is -- and it's hard for some to see it now -- that out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf Coast, like it was before. Out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch. (Laughter.)"
(via TAPPED)

What. An. Incredible. Asshole.

Photo via digby, where the caption reads, "A man holding a baby uncovers the body of a dead man, suspected to have been sitting there for two days, outside the New Orleans Convention Center September 1, 2005."

Mayor Nagin calls BS on the relief effort:

...I keep hearing that it's coming, it's politics, man, and they're playing games, and they're spinning, they're out there spinning for the cameras. They don't have a clue what's going on down here. They flew down here one time, two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kinda goddam -- excuse my French everybody in America but I am pissed -- "this is coming down"...my answer to that is BS, where is the beef? Because there is no beef in this city, there is no beef anywhere in southeast Louisiana...

...You know the reason the looters got out of control? Because we had most of our resources saving people, thousands of people, that were stuck in attics, man. Old ladies... when you pull off the doggone ventilator vent, and you look down in there, they're standing in there in water up to their frickin necks. God is looking down on all this, and if they're not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price. Because every day that we delay, people are dying, and they're dying by the hundreds, I'm willing to bet you.

I need reinforcements, I need troops, man, I need 500 buses. You call him right now, and you call the governor, and tell them to delegate the power that they have to the mayor of New Orleans, and we'll get this damn thing fixed.

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UPDATE, 9/2: A new joke form is born. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:00:00 PM -- |    

 
A national disgrace
BBC: Refugees tell tales of horror:

At the New Orleans' Superdome stadium, refugees describe piles of faeces, knee-high, after the toilets overflowed and people were forced to relieve themselves on staircases.

The subheadline: Mothers scrape out their babies' nappies so they may be used again. Meanwhile, the LA Times has a photo that says it all:


Remind me what use this country is to the people of New Orleans, exactly? Oh, right: Keeping them safe from Zarqawi and Bin Laden -- but those guys are working on that, too. And when they execute a plan, the one thing you can count on will be that no one will be ready for that either, with anything but martial law, "ruthless" treatment of looters (Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour), and excuses about how the disaster wasn't foreseeable* (and then blaming residents for staying put if they didn't have a way to get anywhere).

Were things not so far along, I'd support dismantling the "Department of Homeland Security," and letting its member agencies go their separate ways. What they've accomplished in New Orleans -- FEMA in particular -- seems to be distinctly less than the sum of their past parts. Bless the Coast Guard, at least, as far as I can tell.

What kind of planning puts the inevitable stay-behinds in a large metropolitan city in a shelter without adequate sewage facilities? Was it rocket science to plan for boats, porta-potties, and supplies for at least the Superdome refugees? What idiots run the show these days?

Meanwhile, we've apparently scraped the bottom of the barrel to do a job for Iraq that we need to do for New Orleans, according to the CSIS' Christine Wormuth (speaking to McClatchy News):

Wormuth said she doesn't believe the deployment of so many National Guard troops to Iraq because of the war has created a shortage of troops to respond to the hurricane and flooding. However, she said, difficulty in clearing major roads in the path of Katrina has "probably been exacerbated to some degree by the fact that because of the operations in Iraq, Guard units have been directed to leave some portions of their equipment behind in Iraq. . . . In some cases you have units that would normally have more bulldozers, more trucks than they do, to clear those roads. (link)

I was yelling "f*** you" after every sentence of Bush's on the radio this morning, along with most of New Orleans, I expect. I wonder if Commander Flight Suit has the guts to go to the Superdome or the Convention Center, along with the mayor, city council, and governor of these people. They all owe these citizens an apology and their resignations. And then maybe they'll need to make an "Escape from New Orleans" movie about it.


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* Bush: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." Via Atrios and Slate, where a counterexample is easily provided (UPDATE, 9/3: more refutation of Bush's claim -- and the Times' lazy acceptance of it -- at Media Matters); moreover, the levees could have been just overtopped by Katrina if the storm had been stronger or hit New Orleans more directly. From the same article ("Government Saw Flood Risk but Not Levee Failure"):

Brian Wolshon, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University who served as a consultant on the state's evacuation plan, said little attention was paid to moving out New Orleans's "low-mobility" population - the elderly, the infirm and the poor without cars or other means of fleeing the city, about 100,000 people.

At disaster planning meetings, he said, "the answer was often silence."

As Kevin Drum writes: "It's not that no one had thought of this problem. They just didn't consider it important enough to spend any time on." posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:30:00 PM -- |    

 
SKB sighting
The "artist formerly known as South Knox Bubba" is guest-blogging for the week over at "Facing South."

Topics so far include thoughts on Hurricane Katrina, and a nasty situation in Tennessee's Blount County involving racially motivated threats, local high schools, and the Confederate flag.

UPDATE, 8/30: Mountain Girl writes that he's also set up a photo blog, RViews; if you go to the gallery area, there are bird photos and several from his recent trip west.

Meanwhile, in similar news, Paperwight says he'll be back. posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:24:00 PM -- |    

 
The new Jim Crow: brought to you by Georgia, approved by Bush
Last Friday, in "Justice Department OK's Georgia's Voter ID law," the AP's Jeffrey MacMurray reported:

The Justice Department on Friday approved a controversial Georgia law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, and opponents immediately vowed to challenge the measure in federal court. [...]

The measure would eliminate the use of several currently accepted forms of voter identification, such Social Security cards, birth certificates or utility bills, at the polls.

No other state has gone as far in eliminating alternative IDs at the polls. David Becker, a former Justice Department official, titled his op-ed about Georgia voter ID laws with a succinct question -- Reviving Jim Crow? -- and pointed out:

[I]t is surprisingly difficult to obtain a photo ID in Georgia. Though the state has 159 counties, there are only 56 places in which residents can obtain a driver's license, and not one is within the city limits of Atlanta or within the six counties that have the highest percentage of blacks.

(Via Mark Kleiman) Becker points out that the exemption for absentee ballots -- also disproportionately underused by black Georgians -- gives the lie to claims the law's motivation is to reduce fraud. State Senator Tyrone Brooks addressed this issue today in the Atlanta Journal Constitution, arguing that both absentee ballots and paperless electronic voting are more frequent sources of questions and fraud than are voters misrepresenting themselves or others at the ballot box. Brooks adds:

A recent opinion column by Sen. Bill Stephens was headlined "Democrats hardly innocent of fraud" (@issue, Aug. 19). This is an interesting headline that leads to a curious implication: Is it now someone else's turn at fraud?[...]

Voter fraud is wrong on each side of the aisle. Whether practiced by racist segregationists in 1946 or right-wing conservatives in 2006, it is equally repugnant and un-American.

(All emphases added.) There are other provisions worth pointing out -- for instance, the "Radical Georgia Moderate" noticed that if no one wins 50% of the vote in (nominally) nonpartisan elections (judges, school board, etc.), runoffs are to be held during Thanksgiving week, praise the Lord and pass a little more voter suppression.

I'm surprised I haven't heard more about this. The state of Georgia is fast distinguishing itself as a laboratory for every kind of vote suppression and democracy-undermining tactic -- from partisan re-redistricting to voter ID to deceptive ballot measures (added bonus: in the service of homophobic marriage and civil union restrictions) to paperless electronic voting.*

True, it's not dogs and beatings any more -- Georgia's rulers are too genteel and savvy for that, and it's just bad for business. No, much better to find bloodless, computerized, complex, but always dishonest ways to disenfranchise unwanted voters and get the election results you want.

If this is American democracy, the hell with it. And the hell with those who've advocated these measures. And shame on the rest of us who do nothing about it. As Kleiman reminds us: qui tacet, consentit -- who remains silent, consents.


Links:
Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials
ACLU-Georgia; ACLU-Voting Rights Act ("Renew. Restore.") (Meanwhile, I'd settle for "Enforce.")
The Democratic Party of Georgia


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* I'm guessing the next round will be a fight against Georgia's obligations under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act -- in which case such folk can probably count on would-be Supreme Court Justice John Roberts' enthusiastic help.
UPDATE, 8/29: Gary Farber was discussing this with John Cole over the weekend, and fleshes out reasons to oppose Georgia's restrictive photo ID rules. posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:36:00 PM -- |    

 
Cross your fingers for New Orleans
Uh-oh. Washington Post: Evacuation Ordered as Katrina Bears Down on New Orleans:

"The mayor of New Orleans ordered the immediate evacuation of the city today as Hurricane Katrina, now a Category 5 storm packing 175 mph winds, bore down on the Louisiana coast after gathering strength in the Gulf of Mexico.[...]

The weather service said reports from an Air Force hurricane hunter aircraft indicated that Katrina's maximum sustained winds increased to near 175 mph, from about 160 mph reported earlier this morning, and that it was packing even higher gusts."

That's about 280km/h, for those of you checking in from overseas. The National Weather Service is speaking of "potentially catastrophic and life-threatening" consequences.

Teresa Nielsen Hayden ("Making Light") has a very good post rounding up the reasons why "New Orleans plus hurricane" has been a major disaster waiting to happen. See particularly Chris Mooney's American Prospect article "Thinking Big About Hurricanes."

Good luck, New Orleans.


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UPDATE, 8/29: Via eRobin ("fact-esque"), DailyKos blogger MsLibertarian, and FindArticles, a June 6 New Orleans CityBusiness report noted deep cuts for the New Orleans Army Corps of Engineers:

In fiscal year 2006, the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is bracing for a record $71.2 million reduction in federal funding.
It would be the largest single-year funding loss ever for the New Orleans district, Corps officials said. [...]
The cuts mean major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now.

Of course this is evidence of awesome GOP administration and congressional prescience -- now that Katrina's "just" a Category 4. posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:40:00 PM -- |