From Mediacorps News
In June 2004, southern Louisiana’s emergency management chief Walter Maestri told the local Time Picayune newspaper that federal funds appeared to have been diverted instead of paying for repairs the state’s dykes, designed to protect the low-lying region from flooding.
“Nobody locally is happy that the levees can’t be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us,” he wrote at the time.
“It appears that the money has been moved in the president’s budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that’s the price we pay.”
Wow - I’ve been coming across dozens of things like this in the past week, partly from research, partly from your emails. And it’s outrageous. FEMA reports, articles in scientific journals and mainstream publications, interviews… it’s simply unbelievable. It seems that as far back as 2001, people in the bayou and around the coutry were already making their voices heard about the disaster preparedness in New Orleans just so in case something happened, they could blame the President.
Yes, that’s right, as early as the first Bush budget, there were people preparing to set the President up. Looking forward to the blame game, no doubt, should something terrible happen. A secret liberal-funded program of covert “public warnings” and “widely-circulated scientific reports” and “vociferous protests” was organized under the radar, ensuring that those documents would be sitting there in the archives like time bombs, waiting for the moment that something went wrong…
The saddest thing is that the American people are falling for it, and they’re starting to blame the President for his Iraq War and tax cuts and attendant budget cuts, the things that the vast left-wing conpiracy now claims kept us from spending the necessary funds to prepare for Katrina. In other words, the liberals have sandbagged President Bush by foreseeing and documenting their foreseeing of a completely random and unforeseeable event.
See how devious they were? They made the President look bad by publishing their warnings about something that nobody ever coulda seen coming! And now they point to those things as though listening to ‘em would have made some sort of difference. Where were all these “scientists” and “local officials” back when the budgets were being drawn up? Were they helping out? Nope. The record shows that all they were doing is bitching and moaning, protesting and making dire predictions, not engaging in the process at all.
Don’t fall for their lies. Or their “truths.” Or their “irrefutable evidence.” Don’t be their patsy. Instead, listen to the President’s radio address and be grateful that you live in a country where the forces of negativity and blame haven’t completely taken over. Because those America-haters are doubtless already out there predicting the next disaster, writing their little journal articles about the next earthquake or climate change or crisis that overtaxes our already committed military. And you can be sure that when the next totally unforeseeable calamity comes and claims the lives of thousands of Americans, they’ll be there with their magazines and videotapes and internet links, playing the blame game all over again for their partisan political motivations.
Let them. We’re the greatest nation on earth, and we don’t need their kind.





26 comments
CmdrSue
September 10, 2005 at 10:45 pm
1Thanks, I needed that.
Mojo
September 10, 2005 at 10:46 pm
2The reason we’re the greatest country on earth is because of the way we rise to face adversity. If we listened to those dang “thinkers”, we’d have far fewer adversities to rise to. They’re actively trying to reduce our greatness!
Harold
September 10, 2005 at 11:11 pm
3Actually, Mojo, that very argument was made a few years ago to justify Bush’s “Welfare Reform”.
dee
September 10, 2005 at 11:22 pm
4Aha! You think that I’m thinking that you’re thinking what I’m thinking, but I know I’m thinking what you think you’re thinking!
Allison in Santa Cruz
September 10, 2005 at 11:26 pm
5Egad. The logic is irrefutable. Diabolical, even.
Hanna
September 10, 2005 at 11:30 pm
6Isn’t it obvious now that Adam is preparing for his new job as head of FEMA?
And speaking as one of Seattle’s Dykes, I can say without a doubt that funding for my own personal “shoring up” is woefully inadequate. I suppose you’d like to take credit for that, Adam, but I’m not going to give you the satisfaction.
I take full responsibility for the genetic defects that have caused my mind and body to decay well before my time.
Take that Culture of Personal Responsibility!
Love,
Hanna
Ulwan
September 10, 2005 at 11:31 pm
7Hey, the President of the United States of America said, “I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.” And by Gawd that’s good enough for me!
hedera
September 10, 2005 at 11:34 pm
8Somewhere in the ether, I hear a faint voice. Listening carefully, I think I can identify it: yes! It’s George Orwell, yelling at us from wherever he went in the Great Hereafter: “Goddamn it, I told you about this! I wrote a whole book about it. Just because I got the year wrong, you didn’t believe me?”
Somehow, folks, we have to get back to reality; and we won’t get any help from the Bushistas because they wouldn’t recognize reality if it came up and bit them on the ankle.
Landis
September 10, 2005 at 11:36 pm
9I do not think that means what you think it does.
Bob
September 11, 2005 at 3:04 am
10Make sure you listen to this week’s “This American Life” for a few well-told stories by people who were caught up in the aftermath of Katrina. Absolutely chilling.
I’m usually proud to be an American. Just not right now.
tim
September 11, 2005 at 8:17 am
11Hedera,
Of course you realize, the Bush Administration uses the collective works of George Orwell as their governing template. I believe Rove sleeps with “1984″ under his pillow. Or, since he kind of looks like Napoleon the pig, it might be “Animal Farm”.
cooper
September 11, 2005 at 4:35 pm
12Don’t you just love the response Cheney got from the crowd while touring the disaster area? “Go Fuck Yourself!!!” I am proud to be from the South!
hedera
September 11, 2005 at 7:15 pm
13I wouldn’t take it to heart, cooper - after all, they’re just quoting Cheney to himself… and he said it on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
tim, I wish I thought you were making it up. At least you recognize it’s Rove who does this: we all know that Dubya doesn’t read (I almost said “can’t”, but we do have evidence that he can read a TelePrompter).
jackd
September 11, 2005 at 8:33 pm
14Not to harsh our collective buzz, but it looks like the Louisiana Congressional delegation made sure there was *way* more money for totally-unnecessary Army Corps of Engineers projects like upgrading the canal locks than for silly little projects like fixing the levees.
The Cheney/Bush administration needs to be held accountable for putting political hacks in charge of FEMA and for their execrable handling of the New Orleans disaster. *That* debacle is theirs and theirs alone. With the levees, there’s blame to go around everywhere.
ice weasel
September 11, 2005 at 11:16 pm
15That’s thing the right wing ideology gets from it’s fundamentalism. It, the ideology is driven by a god. The ideology is always correct. If something seems to go wrong, it’s clearly not the divine aspect that is in the wrong, it’s something else.
How do you beat that?
And to further insulate that attitude into the American psyche we’ve seen changes in law, custom and enormous amounts of money to further insinuate the fundamentalist flavor of christianity that supports this wingnut thesis.
It’s ironic in that you hear many of these same baptists and assorted christians mumbling about catholics. “Papal infallibility” they murmur derisively as they reflect that only the stuff jesus sends to their prophets is immaculate.
I think the other that plays in here was well documented today over at Hullaballoo. I hope some of you find a moment to read it.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/
cooper
September 11, 2005 at 11:27 pm
16Ripped from Bush radio address -”This time the devastation resulted not from the malice of evil men,” - but from the callousness and stupidity of clueless shit-for-brains. Noted conservative and tax chiseler, Grover Norquist is famous for saying he “wants to shrink the government down to where he can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub”. One would only hope that Cheney/Bush et al are still in the government should that happen.
In a related thought (sort of), maybe if we want to win nations over to our form of government, rather than putting the bulk of our efforts into bombing the bejesus out of them, we could simply lead by example. You know, have money available, train smart people ahead of time, put these people in positions of responsiblity, and be a shining example of efficacy when disaster strikes. Dazzle them with “can do” and “know how”, instead of the recent Keystone Cops-like Katrina fiasco. We’re looking like the old Soviet Union. In listening to the BBC, Europe is horrified and dumbstruck by our response to this hurricane. The French and Germans are having weeklong schaddenfruede (sp.) parties. Most humiliating…
nokangaroos
September 12, 2005 at 9:37 am
17Cooper, “Schadenfreude” is not the word (though Our Heroic Liberators are asserting themselves again these days). “Incredulity”, I´d call it. Having served with the engineers, I have a reasonable grasp of what is doable with three days´ advance warning (in a shitty little Old European country, that is).
So, I agree on the “humiliating”… but definitely not the Schadenfreude.
Mary
September 12, 2005 at 9:50 am
18This would have been much funnier if my sister hadn’t basically said the same thing last night. Except, she was serious and believes it.
Thank you, Hanna, for bringing it back to laugh inducing.
I’m out of humor about this myself. I’ll have to rely on the rest of you to get me smiling again. So far, all y’all are batting 1000
Murray
September 12, 2005 at 4:19 pm
19nokangaroos
I think that schadenfreude would be the word. Literally it means joy in the sorrow of others. I can see other countries taking pleasure in seeing us unable to take care of our own.
Bush doesn’t believe in planning.
He said so himself.
This is what he said 9/6/00 in Scranton PA
“We don’t believe in planners and deciders making the decisions on behalf of Americans”
So there you have it.
Pete IVDL
September 13, 2005 at 4:19 am
20Landis - is that the quote from ‘The Princess Bride’? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
Ice Weasel : yeah, it’s definitely a case of “Do not adjust your set. Normality will be returned as soon as possible. We apologise for the inconvenience.” (Or should that be, “We apologise for the incumbent”?)
Hanna, you go, girl! If you don’t get shored up by a bunch of engineers from the ACOE, you’d better be talking to your local representative. Unless they’re conservative, in that case they’ll just blame dykes and liberals for one more administration-induced problem. Hmm. Maybe better not say anything after all…
me
September 13, 2005 at 2:35 pm
21Just heard something on NPR yesterday about the dykes. Seems funding was cut from teh beginning and started to get bad as far back as the 70’s.
I don’t think Bush is the only one responsible if the project was grossly underfunded through many administrations.
Just as all the world’s intelligence community was wrong about WMD, it seems many administrations felt the NO levees were a secondary priority.
Not saying it is right, just saying I think it is wrong to point to Bush. Clinton, Carter, Reagan all seem to have had a hand in this problem.
Harold
September 13, 2005 at 3:15 pm
22You missed a Bush there.
hedera
September 14, 2005 at 12:20 am
23“me” is correct (that’s very hard to respond to) that the Shrub isn’t solely responsible for the decay of the levees. Several administrations back to and including his father’s have been culpable there. Shrub certainly didn’t help, however, and several of his actions (not least, tucking FEMA into a side pocket of DHS where it wouldn’t get in anyone’s way) have made the situation worse than it would have been if the country weren’t being led by people who didn’t realize that when Frank Zappa wrote, “It can’t happen HEEEEERE!”, it was satire…
pubfan
September 14, 2005 at 12:07 pm
24I am always proud to be an American. I just happen to be ashamed and embarassed by what the rest of the world thinks of the leadership they believe we elected. Bush is an idiot in so many wonderful and terrible ways.
Baylink
September 17, 2005 at 4:05 pm
25Sure, Hannah; *beat* me to the damn joke.
h.m rukeyser
October 4, 2005 at 2:09 am
26hurricanes are not “unforeseeable” let alone “random.” in fact, we can count on them every autumn. and your undocumented comment about scientists failing to show up for house appropriations meetings is non-sensical if not ludicrous. every time scientists have advised this administration with suggestions that threaten their corporate pocket books, they are accused of “bad science.”
is this blog “bait?” bait to catch righties with a full mouth of copenhagen and a sweaty hand on the bible?