Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

In my day, never was longer.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

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Laying on the Snark

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Tierney hammers Congress for their lousy priorities:

At last there is a light in the darkness. Washington was slow to respond to Katrina’s victims, but now Congress has finally sprung into action. It has bravely promised to investigate the situation.

Unfortunately, the members haven’t figured out exactly how, because Democrats want it to be done by outsiders. They say the Republicans will turn it into a cover-up. But why does that bother the Democrats so much? Shouldn’t members of both parties want to cover this up? …

Or suppose the investigators try to find out why the Army Corps of Engineers didn’t protect New Orleans from the flood. Democrats have blamed the Iraq war for diverting money and attention from domestic needs. But that hasn’t meant less money for the Corps during the past five years. Overall spending hasn’t declined since the Clinton years, and there has been a fairly sharp increase in money for flood-control construction projects in New Orleans.

The problem is that the bulk of the Corps’s budget goes for projects far less important than preventing floods in New Orleans. And if the investigators want to find who’s responsible, they don’t have to leave Capitol Hill…

Would Congressional investigators focus on these pork-barrel projects? I would guess not. My daring prediction is they would make two discoveries. First, that mistakes were made by many people outside Congress. Second, that more money must be spent on flood protection throughout America.

A few outside skeptics may suggest letting this money be spent by mayors and governors in flood-prone areas who can lose their jobs if they earmark it for too many boondoggles and allow disasters to occur. But members of Congress would conclude that only they can be trusted to dispense the money. Of course, should there be another flood somewhere, they would be glad to investigate.

Amen. See also Will Wilkinson, who appears to be at the end of his rope with some of this stuff.

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    Miller

    What is needed is a NON-PARTISAN investigation because: (1) The usual bi-partisan investigations involve too many trade-offs (“I’ll overlook your party’s shortcomings if you overlook mine”); (2) Congress can’t be expected to judge the impact of their own past spending priorities; (3) The 2006 election cycle will get in the way; (4) The White House can’t be expected to investigate themselves; the current Administration has never taken responsibility for any problems and they aren’t about to start now. Anything less than a full-scale INDEPENDENT commission will be a waste of time and resources and be widely regarded as a whitewash.

  2. 2.

    slide

    How many fallacies and idiotic statements can we find here:

    Washington was slow to respond to Katrina’s victims

    Congress’s job is not to “respond” to Katria’s victims in the middle of an emergency. That is the job of the Executive Branch.

    Shouldn’t members of both parties want to cover this up? …

    So the only reason to have any analysis of what went wrong here is to gain a political advantage? No need to actually see how we could correct what we all saw on our TV scrrens? Hey, moron, I live in NY, a prime target of terrorism, I want my federal government to do a better job. Don’t you?

    Or suppose the investigators try to find out why the Army Corps of Engineers didn’t protect New Orleans from the flood.

    Huh? What fuckkin nerve now to blame the Army Corps of Engineers who’s requests for funding levee projects has been repeatedly cut by the Bush adminstration. Now you want to lay the blame on them? Jesus this is too fucking much.

    Democrats have blamed the Iraq war for diverting money and attention from domestic needs.

    Not just Democrats ass wipe. This from the chief of the National Guard, Lt. Gen Steven Blum:

    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.

    there has been a fairly sharp increase in money for flood-control construction projects in New Orleans.

    What a lying sack of shit:Since 2003, FEMA gave no money to Orleans and Jefferson Parishes in Louisiana, even though it recognized the flooding risks from a hurricane or levee breach as reported here about four hours ago.
    Maestri [the local EM director] is still awaiting word from FEMA officials as to why Louisiana, despite being called the “floodplain of the nation” in a 2002 FEMA report, received no disaster mitigation grant money from FEMA in 2003 (“Homeland Insecurity,” Sept. 28). Maestri says the rejection left emergency officials around the state “flabbergasted.”
    Indeed, the June 6th edition of New Orleans CityBusiness reported that the 2006 federal budget would cut another $71M from the Corps of Engineers budget used to protect New Orleans from flooding.

  3. 3.

    Mark-NC

    Wilkinson’s comments are a combination of common sense, journalist bashing, and mind reading about what other people could possibly think. A bit strange from my vantage. He highlights, in detail, that Bush is nothing if not a free spender.

    It’s the rest of the Bush “leadership” that baffles me, and most of the planet.

    In a nutshell, here’s how I see things:

    1. Our country has no lack of resources.

    2. Given our immense resources, they are useless unless sombody in charge has a clue in how to use them!

    Even from the libertarian viewpoint where government should be limited to critical functions – protection from foreign threats, and response to natural disastors are two that everyone agrees we should be doing.

    Clinton took FEMA seriously, and picked a well qualified, experienced man to run it.

    Bush I & II both used FEMA as a political award and placed people in charge who were clueless.

    The results are obvious!

  4. 4.

    slide

    Clinton took FEMA seriously, and picked a well qualified, experienced man to run it.

    To amplify:

    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)

    God, I miss that man.

  6. 6.

    Steve S

    Tierney is an embarassment to the Times.

    I don’t know what he’s thinking by suggesting an investigation is only about politics. It’s about getting to the fucking heart of the matter and correcting it.

  7. 7.

    Slide

    Wilkinson said this stupidity: And incompetence is built into the very idea, whether or not one’s favored party is in power.

  8. 8.

    Slide

    Wildinson:

    The liberal columnist’s kind of government — big government — is exactly the kind we’ve got. And incompetence is built into the very idea, whether or not one’s favored party is in power.

    Its just built it? You mean that Bush appointing five of the top eight people in FEMA with absolutely no disaster management experience is not why they are incompetent? From all the reports I have read FEMA was VERY competent under Bill Clinton when he had an expert running it. So to the moronic right, who you put into government positions makes no difference as the system is just incompetent. What a bunch of bull shit.

    So to recap, no problem for bush to appoint lying incompetents since the “liberal” government is already incompetent. Jesus what fuckin planet are these guys on?

  9. 9.

    Zifnab

    It’s a little early to be talking about investigations. Let’s first decide if something went wrong.

    Well, that’s kinda the crux of the issue. If you send in the Republicans (or god forbid the White House itself) to investigate their own dealings, I’m very confident that the investigators will be unable to find any actual wrong doing. It’s like asking a ten year old to clean his room, and then letting him be the judge of whether it’s clean or not. Knowing that the buck needs to stop somewhere, I have no doubt that state and local officals will catch a large amount of flak for their own “failure to respond”, while the Republican powers that be will walk away with clean hands.

    If you send in an independent commission, I don’t know what you’ll find. Mostly, because there’s no way to know from the information publically availalbe exactly how badly the situation was bungled. But I can plead ignorance to an independent commission’s findings only because an independent commission would not have a mile long track record of clouding the issue with obscure talking points and passing the buck to someone not them.

    Even if the independent commission discovers serious wrong doing, I doubt the White House or a Republican Congress will move to censure itself. The best you can get out of this commission is the truth, a truth that could possibly have a baring on the ’06 election (if it’s finished in time). Might as well just sit back and wait for Fitzgerald to finish his Rove investigation. But at least the whole thing won’t reck of cover-up.

  10. 10.

    Slide

    Maybe we need that investigation to find out why, when conducting a hurricane exercise for Lousiana, FEMA told the local authorites this:

    There was a certain amount of contention, a few turf wars, some loud talk. None if it consequential, in the end, because of the single greatest emollient: FEMA. The Federal Emergency Management Agency promised the moon and the stars. They promised to have 1,000,000 bottles of water per day coming into affected areas within 48 hours. They promised massive prestaging with water, ice, medical supplies and generators. Anything that was needed, they would have either in place as the storm hit or ready to move in immediately after. All it would take is a phone call from local officials to the state, who would then call FEMA, and it would be done. There were contracts-in-place with major vendors across the country and prestaging areas were already determined (I’ll have more to say about this later, but this is one reason FEMA has rejected large donation and turned back freelance shipments of water, medical supplies, food, etc: they have contracts in place to purchase those items, and accepting the same product from another source could be construed as breach of contract, and could lead to contract cancellation, thus removing a reliable source of product from the pool of available resources. I’m not saying I agree with this — in fact, I don’t, and think it’s boneheaded — but the reasoning is that if they accept five semis of water from the east Weewau, Wisconsin, Chamber of Commerce, the water supplier who is contractually bound to provide 100,000 gallons per day will be freed from that obligation.

    .

  11. 11.

    jobiuspublius

    Tierney Spouting Thru His Rectum:
    Congress has finally sprung into action. It has bravely promised to investigate the situation.

    Unfortunately, the members haven’t figured out exactly how, because Democrats want it to be done by outsiders.

    Blame Game anyone?

  14. 14.

    jobiuspublius

    Zifnab Says:

    Remember, whoever smelt it dealt it.

    So it’s the big gumit weatherman’s fault! I knew man-on-dog was right!

  15. 15.

    Otto Man

    It’s a little early to be talking about investigations. Let’s first decide if something went wrong

    But aren’t investigations the only way to figure out if something went wrong?

    And as far as being “too soon,” the investigations into Pearl Harbor started within a couple days and the Warren Commission investigating JFK’s assassination was launched seven days after his death. There’s no reason at all to wait.

  16. 16.

    Mark-NC

    Otto Man:

    You are forgetting the Bush model of government.

    Bush didn’t even want to investigate 9/11. He stonewalled until public pressure forced it on him.

    Without extreme pressure from the public, the media, and the Dems, Bush will do nothing – and the Republicans will declare his inaction to be “bold leadership”.

  18. 18.

    jobiuspublius

    Some may find this distressing:


    Inescapable Accountability

    By E. J. Dionne Jr.

    Friday, September 9, 2005; Page A25

    The following is brought to you by the word “accountability.”

    Keep that word in mind whenever you hear defenders of President Bush accusing his political opponents of playing the “blame game” by daring to pose pointed questions about why so many people in New Orleans, most of them very poor, had to wait so long for relief from their suffering.

    …

  19. 19.

    scs

    This doesn’t have a lot to do with the segement, but I have an idea for the New Orleans low-lying areas. House boats. That way if the levee breaks again, the houses will just float up with it. Could work right?

  20. 20.

    Mark-NC

    scs:

    How about a better idea.

    If they rebuild, make them build like they do at the beach.

    The bottom floor is storage, garage, etc, and built so flooding up to 10 feet or so won’t damage the main structure or contents!

  21. 21.

    Zifnab

    Houses on stilts are notoriously unstable and when you’ve got a breached levee, that water doesn’t flow in at a trickle, it comes in big, scary-looking tsunami-style waves. I mean, you could do houses on stilts, but at this stage of the game, I’d suggest you just move the city entirely or at least partically. Get a real set of city planners in there and engineer the city from the ground up. And if the city planners think stilts are a good idea, go for it. However, I suspect one of the main tragedies of New Orleans was urban sprawl. Much harder to protect a city when it just kinda mutates every which way over the course of a decade or two.

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