hurricane katrina

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Hurricane Isaac is on target to Florida starting tomorrow night. Currently the storm is off the coast of Cuba, but being over open, warm water means that Isaac has the fuel it needs to gain strength.

As we know the Republican convention starts in Tampa this week. There has already been talk in the media of delaying it, but Reince Priebus, the RNC chair, has vowed that won't happen.

Now this makes me wonder a few things. Let's take a walk down a hypothetical, but probably road.

Say Isaac ends up gaining more steam than the computer models are predicting and even moves a little more to the east, giving Tampa a more direct hit. Certainly Tampa officials would issue evacuation orders. So if that happens and the RNC decides to ignore them, another strong possibility by what Priebus is saying, should the government not help those in attendance should they need it?

That's a very serious question and I only bring it up because of the right's reaction to Hurricane Katrina. Remember back then? The right didn't blame the totally botched response of the government, but rather the people for not listening to the warnings. Well they are prepared to do the same here.

If anyone wonders why CNN is in such a downward spiral, they only need to look at this article to get an idea of why:

Oil slick awaits New Orleans' 1st white mayor in decades

The first white mayor of New Orleans in more than 30 years steps into his first challenge as soon as he takes office Monday: the massive oil slick that is creeping to his coast.

The fallout from a ruptured undersea well off Louisiana is spewing about 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) of crude a day into the Gulf of Mexico. And efforts to corral the rapidly growing oil spill have so far been unsuccessful.

The article is predominately focused on the oil spill, with only the first paragraph and this little bit about New Orleans news mayor:

Into this climate, steps Democrat Mitch Landrieu.

His city is still digging itself out from the wrath of Hurricane Katrina five years ago. And his state is the top producer of seafood -- and so, has a lot at stake from the spill's impact.

Landrieu -- who lost two previous mayoral bids in 1994 and 2006 -- replaces the term-limited Ray Nagin in a city where about two-thirds of the residents are black.

The city's last white mayor was Landrieu's father, Maurice "Moon" Landrieu, who left office in 1978. He is remembered fondly for desegregating the city, appointing African-Americans to positions of city leadership and opening up public facilities to blacks.

Last week, the younger Landrieu took part in a flyover of the spill for a first-hand look.

"As this situation becomes clearer, there are obvious environmental and health concerns, especially as it relates to Lake Pontchartrain, our coast, and our air quality," he said Thursday. "But, there is also an economic component of the utmost importance including the impact on our fisheries

Someone doesn’t like people talking about her man:

I was disappointed to read “Gov. Paterson’s Performance” (editorial, May 9), which characterized Joe Scarborough as a “leader in the Republican attack squad.”

My television and radio co-host has spent the last five years being equally tough on Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington. Joe was one of the first TV reporters to criticize the Bush White House during Hurricane Katrina. And while others were writing of a permanent Republican majority, Joe was predicting the collapse of the G.O.P. because of its reckless economic policies.

On our TV and radio programs, and also in his latest book, Joe urges his party to be more moderate in temperament and more accepting of dissent from leaders like former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

Joe’s evenhanded approach angers harsh ideologues on both sides. Last week, he was attacked by right-wing hosts for being too open-minded, and now byyour liberal editorial page.

This liberal thinks The New York Times should follow Joe Scarborough’s example of speaking truth to power — regardless of which party is in power.

Mika Brzezinski
New York, May 11, 2009

I used to watch Morning Joe every morning and Mika is nothing but a sidekick. If she says something he doesn’t agree with then Joe quickly “puts her in her place”. It’s like some sick reality show of a husband controlling his wife’s every view. No wonder they have a ratings problem.

  There is so much damage control to be done from eight years of total incompetence running our country that we end up forgetting where all the broken pieces are. Well Barack Obama hasn’t forgotten and he is working to fix them. One big piece is FEMA:

The Federal Emergency Management Administration, a tragicomic disaster since Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 -- and even before then -- looks to be getting a facelift under the Obama administration, sources tell us.

First off, the likely plan is to break off the agency from the Department of Homeland Security, a move that would in itself help restore the pride FEMA folks felt when it was an independent agency.

Second, there's increasing talk that former director James Lee Witt, who took over the then-troubled agency at the start of the Clinton administration and left it eight years later with a much enhanced reputation for getting things done, is coming back in from retirement to run FEMA for maybe six months to a year and whip it into shape.

After Katrina we heard how there would be major restructuring of FEMA. Congress even said it should be totally rebuilt. Bush ignored it. President Ego once again thought he knew best. Of course FEMA hasn’t been really tested since Katrina, so a well thought out restructuring is the only way to help insure they are ready to respond. Breaking them off from Homeland Security is an excellent start and brining back James Lee Witt will help make it all possible.

When a company continues to fail miserably the answer is not to fire all the employees, but rather the CEO. If a team goes on a multi-season losing streak, the players aren't all replaced, but rather the coach. So why doesn't the same apply to the White House?

In the past we have seen great evidence of the failed cronyism that is the White House. Our first glimpse actually started during hurricane Katrina, when Mike Brown became a household name synonymous with failure. During that same time we had another name come to center stage, Harriet Miers, a name now resurfacing. Last year we saw the removal of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense and some top brass changes in the military. Those can be attributed to the failed Iraq policy.

Now in the past month the failed state of cronyism is at an all time high. We have already seen three top military officials fired of the Walter Reed fiasco, something that top Republicans knew was going on since the early months of the war. Dick Cheney's chief of staff has been convicted of numerous crimes, including the obstructing the investigation into the outing of a CIA agent. This week Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff resigns amid all the turmoil over the fired U.S.As.

For a person who ran a campaign on "accountability", Bush sure has had none. Instead he constantly brushes off the problems and puts the blame onto cronies that have emerged. Take Harriet Miers. She is now becoming the fall person for the White House's involvement in the U.S.A. purge:

With Mr. Bush traveling in Mexico, the White House insisted that the president’s role had been minimal and laid the blame primarily on Harriet E. Miers, who was White House counsel when the prosecutors lost their jobs and who stepped down in January.

Of course Bush would take his weekly radio address to try and prop up his image on Katrina:

Nearly one year after Hurricane Katrina created a humanitarian and political crisis, President George W. Bush said on Saturday the storm showed the government was unprepared to respond to a disaster of that magnitude and revealed "deep-seated poverty" in America.

Political fallout from the hurricane, which killed more than 1,000 people and displaced tens of thousands, was severe for Bush last year, sending his public opinion ratings to new lows amid widespread criticism the government's response had been too slow.

He returns next week to the scene of one of the worst natural disasters in American history to meet with local residents and officials to review progress in rebuilding New Orleans and communities along the Gulf Coast that were flooded and destroyed.

His trip to Louisiana and Mississippi comes as the election season heats up with Democrats trying to seize control of Congress from the president's Republican Party in November congressional elections.

"One year after the storms, the Gulf Coast continues down the long road to recovery. In Mississippi and Louisiana, we can see many encouraging signs of recovery and renewal, and many reminders that hard work still lies ahead," Bush said.

"We will stay until the job is done," he pledged in his weekly radio address from Maine, where he was visiting family.

So what has Bush and the Republican controlled congress done this year to address these problems Katrina "showed" us? Well let they tried to cut taxes for the wealthiest 1% of this nation again. They enacted the new Medicare program that ends up costing the poorest of our seniors more than it did before. They tried to ban gay marriage and flag burning.

While the media has been strongly focused on the Middle East, a bombshell was set off last week with Hurricane Katrina. I posted about FEMA not allowing citizens in their trailer parks access to reporters. The only way they can talk to reporters is if a FEMA official is with them (sounds like the old Saddam "minders"). This not only infringes on the first amendment of the victims, but also the first amendment protection our free press and the very fabric of our society.

Well the story is starting to get a little more notice and even has some law makers in an outrage:

Members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation said Monday that FEMA’s policy restricting media access to residents living in FEMA-managed trailer parks is absurd, outrageous and denies park residents their rights as American citizens.

“FEMA just strikes you as a bureaucracy that’s out of control,” said U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner. “You don’t lose your fundamental rights just because you’re living in temporary housing. It’s an outrageous pattern of behavior.”

Jindal was referring to a July 15 article in which The Advocate detailed an incident in a Federal Emergency Management Agency-operated trailer park in Morgan City where a reporter and photographer were ordered off of the site.

The two had been invited into a trailer occupied by resident Dekotha Devall and her family. But during the interview a security guard ordered the reporter and photographer to leave.

The security guard called the police after the reporter attempted to give Devall a business card, an act the guard said was forbidden