But as a resident of post-Katrina New Orleans, the one decision point that really has me fired up is how your library represents the choices you faced in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. According to your exhibit the main problem you faced was how to restore law and order. The big issue that visitors are asked to resolve, is whether or not you should have invoked the Insurrection Act to control the looters. …
And you were trying to figure out whether or not to quell an insurrection? These people were Americans, Mr. President. Homeowners, taxpayers, voters. Your people and you were vacationing while they drowned. The decision you should have been making, sir, wasn’t on how to quell them. It was how to save them.
Anytime you get a letter from Dr. Harris-Perry, that says “Dear *blank*, It’s me, Melissa … ,” just pack your things and leave.
Also on #TWiB!Radio, Dr. Boyce Watkins teaches us about the “Most Racist Commercial in History” and the movement to #FreeTheTwerkTeam.
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And this morning on #amTWiB:
L. Joy forgets how to start the show, regulating 3-D printed guns, and LGBTQ folks need to wash the stain of sin before entering the Catholic Church.
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Folks wishing to engage directly with #TeamBlackness should direct their comments to the Original Post.
piratedan
GWB: hey I only promised not to leave children behind, the rest of ya better learn how to swim……
raven
She kicks ass and takes names with the best!
gocart mozart
Why is it that white people can’t say the N-Word without all hell breaking loose but the Nabisco Co. can slap the word “cracker” on all their products without a peep from the media. Why the double standard?
raven
@gocart mozart: Why can I tell you to go fuck yourself you stupid motherfucker?
Baud
@gocart mozart:
Shit, don’t even get me started on Spic ‘N Span.
gocart mozart
@raven: Poe, Poe, Poe you
Baud
@gocart mozart:
Actually, that was Raven being cordial. You don’t want to see him when he’s angry. ;-)
gocart mozart
@Baud:
Tell me about it
gocart mozart
The Raven was foiled by Poe’s Law. Isn’t it ironic.
Baud
@gocart mozart:
FWIW, I think there is someone who comments here (very rarely) as “The Raven,” who, IIRC, is nothing like our familiar raven.
Ben Franklin
@gocart mozart:
Cracker is a white burden. It’s self-deprecating humor.
Ben Franklin
@Baud:
No. That’s the other raven….
Todd
The goobers went fucking spastic over people carrying unsellable items out of flooded stores. Incredibly useful stuff like beer (sealed liquid), canned goods and other sealed items would be incredibly useful and precious in the aftermath, as were things like wet clothing and shoes.
And the goobers would deny those, even though they couldn’t reach commerce again as flood-soaked goods.
They showed those pictures of school buses, buses that had no drivers, keys god knows where. Buses that Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco had no control over, yet they were blamed because they weren’t used in some dumbass conservative freeforall scramble hours ahead of a major hurricane.
Fuck the goobers.
Todd
The goobers went fucking spastic over people carrying unsellable items out of flooded stores. Incredibly useful stuff like beer (sealed liquid), canned goods and other sealed items would be incredibly useful and precious in the aftermath, as were things like wet clothing and shoes.
And the goobers would deny those, even though they couldn’t reach commerce again as flood-soaked goods.
They showed those pictures of school buses, buses that had no drivers, keys god knows where. Buses that Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco had no control over, yet they were blamed because they weren’t used in some dumbass conservative freeforall scramble hours ahead of a major hurricane.
Fuck the goobers.
Todd
The goobers went fucking spastic over people carrying unsellable items out of flooded stores. Incredibly useful stuff like beer (sealed liquid), canned goods and other sealed items would be incredibly useful and precious in the aftermath, as were things like wet clothing and shoes.
And the goobers would deny those, even though they couldn’t reach commerce again as flood-soaked goods.
They showed those pictures of school buses, buses that had no drivers, keys god knows where. Buses that Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco had no control over, yet they were blamed because they weren’t used in some dumbass conservative freeforall scramble hours ahead of a major hurricane.
Fuck the goobers.
Todd
The goobers went fucking spastic over people carrying unsellable items out of flooded stores. Incredibly useful stuff like beer (sealed liquid), canned goods and other sealed items would be incredibly useful and precious in the aftermath, as were things like wet clothing and shoes.
And the goobers would deny those, even though they couldn’t reach commerce again as flood-soaked goods.
They showed those pictures of school buses, buses that had no drivers, keys god knows where. Buses that Ray Nagin and Kathleen Blanco had no control over, yet they were blamed because they weren’t used in some dumbass conservative freeforall scramble hours ahead of a major hurricane.
Fuck the goobers.
Roger Moore
@Todd:
And FYWP.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
Jimmy Carter talks about Guinea worm.
Jay
Question for the room: Have MHP and Joan Walsh spoken publicly since their…thing?
Tonal Crow
Awesome. The election (and re-election) of Barack Obama has really forced the wingnuts from their stealth strategy. Now they just can’t stop themselves from saying everything that’s on their minds, except for the n-word itself.
This is all to the good, since it stands some chance of waking a somnolent public.
Baud
@Jay:
I didn’t know they had a thing.
@SiubhanDuinne:
I had to google. Good for Carter, but I’m not sure how it relates to my comment.
Tonal Crow
@SiubhanDuinne:
Every Republican should have some of those, to teach them empathy.
gocart mozart
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_%28pejorative%29
Ben Franklin
@gocart mozart:
So much for self-deprecating humor.
cmorenc
@Tonal Crow:
We can wish, but the odds are long so long as such a big chunk of the public keeps up vastly more about the happenings on “Dancing with the Stars” than the details of public affairs.
Ben Franklin
@cmorenc:
We can wish, but the odds are long so long as such a big chunk of the public keeps up vastly more about the happenings on “Dancing with the Stars” than the details of public affairs.
No shite. If only American blogs could escape the cultural narcissism.
YellowJournalism
Has anyone transcribed the issues and decision-making section of the GWB library? I will never visit it, so I’d like to find out what other moronic takes on major events are like.
Calming Influence
I remember distinctly that Crackers taking food and beverages out of 7-11s were “foraging for desperately needed supplies”, while Blah people were “looting”.
Mike G
Bush frames his ‘Decision Points’ as “This bad situation dropped from the sky and I couldn’t do nothin’.” Like he has the IQ of a dog and can’t possibly be expected to think of anything but the present moment.
It never occurred to his lazy ass that he should have planned ahead, not put in charge incompetent, pliable cronies whose chief aim was to funnel money to his other cronies, and make every policy choice only according to short-term political calculation. No, he’ll just sit there like a deer in the headlights for the inevitable disaster to strike, then whine about what hard work it is dealing with this bad situation that had nothing to do with him.
Like actually hold some meetings about counter-terrorism in his first nine months of office instead of focusing defense efforts on the greater-grift-potential uselessness of Star Wars.
Or actually manage the US government as if it had important jobs to do, instead of treating the Presidency like every other corporate “job” he had in his spoiled life, as another lucrative con handed to him by his dad’s buddies for doling out patronage and contracts.
Citizen_X
The Insurrection Act? At the site of a major, urban disaster? What the fucking fuck?
lamh35
@Baud: yeah, I never realized they had a thing?
Roger Moore
@YellowJournalism:
Apparently, Rachel Maddow did a segment on it. My impression is that if you make any decision but the one Bush made, it has a video explaining why your decision was wrong and Bush’s was right.
lamh35
If you haven’t been paying attention to this story, then you should be. Please sign this petition, and let’s do something for this young sister who had a bright future ahead if not for this over the top punishment.
The High School Science Experiment That Ended In Handcuffs
Ben Franklin
@lamh35:
Signed, sealed and delivered.
Gawd save us from Bureaucrats…
JWL
“The decision you should have been making, sir, wasn’t on how to quell them. It was how to save them”.
That’s a thought that Bush never considered at the time, or afterwards, or, obviously enough, ever will. Because the man is a sociopath, which is why the GOP rallied to him. As Carville’s wife noted just yesterday, the republican party likes “hard men”.
Hill Dweller
@Roger Moore: I agree with what Maddow said in her coverage. This should be a national scandal.
The corrupt assholes in Dubya’s administration shouldn’t get away with feeding their bullshit to children.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
Southern Methodist University can’t burn down soon enough for hosting this sorry excuse for a “library.”
Ben Franklin
@Hill Dweller:
The corrupt assholes in Dubya’s administration shouldn’t get away with feeding their bullshit to children.
Who’s in a position to stop him?
Cacti
But as we all know, the Insurrection Act would only have applied to dangerous black looters and not poor, beleaguered white finders.
TriassicSands
I don’t doubt that in Bush’s mind — he is a pinhead after all — his most important choice in the aftermath of Katrina was whether or not to invoke the Insurrection Act. Don’t forget, he didn’t give a shit about the people. I imagine all the people with money were safely away from the city and all that was left were people who weren’t going to vote for Bush anyway. Providing aid and support was clearly not a high priority. Why would that surprise anyone?
Ben Franklin
@TriassicSands:
you have to remember who reared Dubya.http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspecial/07barbara.html?_r=0
“What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas,” Barbara Bush said in an interview on Monday with the radio program “Marketplace.” “Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.”
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway,” she said, “so this is working very well for them.”
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I was just providing another example of a term that, depending on context, can be a legitimate word or an ethnic slur.
Roger Moore
@JWL:
And, of course, because that’s not the framing he chose, it’s not the framing that will be presented in the museum. You won’t be presented with a choice of “hire an effective head of FEMA” or “effectively regulate the banks” or “listen to your national security advisers when they tell you Osama bin Laden is determined to strike in the United States”. Acute crises only, not advance planning to prevent them from getting so bad in the first place.
SteveinSC
God that’s a disgusting thought. Too bad it wasn’t in some hell-hole after the Hague trial. And someone needs to get MHP off television, that witless whiner.
BillinGlendaleCA
@SiubhanDuinne: This only proves that Jimmy Carter is history’s greatest monster; well, if you’re Guinea worm.
Cacti
@Ben Franklin:
I’ll never forget in 1992, how the librul media made Hillary out to be a ball-busting shrew who had Bill by the short hairs, while nasty old-money bitch Barbara Bush was Grandma Goodness, despite the troubles of Neil and Dubya.
Hurling Dervish
$229,000 FEMA trailers
Agency spent more on trailers than it would have cost to buy new houses
For six months, security guard Mary Guidroz — whose apartment was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina — lived with a friend in a FEMA trailer on a site at the Port Bienville Industrial Park in Bay St. Louis, Miss.
A new report by government watchdogs obtained by NBC News estimates expenses for each FEMA trailer at the Port Bienville site could reach a staggering $229,000.
“I could have bought a brand-new trailer! Or a house even!” Guidroz says.
She’s right. Guidroz could have bought a $200,000, 3-bedroom house nearby, with money left over.
Investigators with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) say the trailers themselves cost only $14,000, but FEMA wasted big money by placing them at a small temporary site built from scratch with huge maintenance costs.
“What you see throughout this report is an utter disregard for how much was being paid,” says Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) who asked the GAO to investigate trailer-maintenance costs.
The GAO found that over a seven month period, FEMA made a total of $30 million in improper or fraudulent payments for trailer maintenance alone. The investigators also found examples of phony inspections, rigged bids, and excessive payments.
At one site, McLeod Water Park in Kiln, Miss., FEMA paid a contractor $1.8 million to clean trailer septic tanks. A staggering $1.5 million of that was profit. While FEMA paid the contractor $245 per cleaning, per trailer, three times each week, the contractor paid a subcontractor $45 per cleaning to actually do the work.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Oh. I have never heard that particular slur before.
Ben Franklin
@Cacti:
Yeah, Hillary. Can I tell you a story? This couple I know had two biznesses in the 90’s both of which went, belly-up forcing a nasty BK. The Trustee took a dark turn and accused them of missing a hearing, which wasn’t true. They, at additional expense, brought their lawyer back to testify they indeed were there, because he was there with them. Short story made Long, the couple wrote Hillary by snailmail, mind you, and within two weeks were contacted by the Trustee. He seemed a mite different at the next meeting. He apologized profusely as he found a clerk had been burying paper, and had misapplied the facts of their case.
I know it wasn’t Hillary who personally called, but she made the call. His deference to them and the fast track to getting their debts indicated he thought they might be connected, which they weren’t. i repeat this story every opportunity I get.
Mike in NC
@Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS): A $250M edifice to honor America’s worst president. Caligula would have approved.
Hill Dweller
@Ben Franklin:
I’m not suggesting anyone “stop them” per se, but a whole lot of attention and ridicule could do wonders to expose their bullshit.
jl
@Hurling Dervish:
Wow, $229,000 FEMA trailers, and $200 plus to clean a trailer septic tank.
A person could get a couple of interesting questions for the library out of that,
But, was your whole comment meant to be link? The link doesn’t work for me.
As for the Katrina section of the libary, I will submit
“Should Rummy and Dick have been fired for insubordination?”
“Should Johnny’s birthday party have been postponed?”
Maybe they plan on rotating the questions!
Calouste
@efgoldman:
Buchanan at least had the decency not to run for reelection.
ruemara
@Jay: I got into a minor tiffle with JW on the twitters after her stunningly stupid article, “How to talk to White People”, advising browns to not talk down to whites about minority status. I’d say MHP and JW won’t be sitting down to tea anytime soon. God, what an idiot.
TriassicSands
@Ben Franklin:
I have a friend in Southern California whose husband was killed in a hit and run accident. She was having trouble with an insurance company, so she contacted her representative — Darrell Issa. She never received a reply.
Issa, the richest man in Congress, must have been busy laundering money or looking for grounds to impeach you-know-who. Some Republicans don’t even pretend they care anymore.
pinacacci
Just wanna point out that the transcript is slightly incorrect.
“These people were Americans, Mr. President. Homeowners, taxpayers, voters. Your people and you were vacationing while they drowned.”
Should read, ” These people were Americans, Mr. President. Homeowners, taxpayers, voters: your people. You were vacationing while they drowned.”
pinacacci
*And (whoops left it out)
A small change in punctuation to the transcript but I think the changed emphasis makes her statement more powerful and I do think it was what she was saying.
DavidTC
Indeed. I actually think the Katrina nonsense should get more attention than the Iraq nonsense.
The Iraq nonsense was a deliberate lie by the administration that we are supposed to believe magically appeared from nowhere and magically everyone fell for it. There’s a narrative there, a way to avoid blame. And the disaster happened over such a long period that everyone forgets what was going on at the start.
There _is_ nothing like that for Katrina, which is why Katrina destroyed the GOP in ways that Iraq did not. And hence Bush is forced to resort to the idea that everything suddenly sprung out of nowhere, and his ‘decision’ was ‘invoked the Insurrection Act’
You know what? People don’t actually have a problem with him invoking the Insurrection Act.
I love how Bush’s response hides behind the excuse of ‘The laws prohibited us from helping’. This is the goddamn administration that _tortured_ in the name of national security, but they’re worried that Americans might complain because they violated the law when rescuing _drowning people_. Fuck. That. Shit. No one would have complained.
And, hell, from what I understand, that applies to the National Guard…why the hell didn’t you send in the _military_? No, Posse Commitatus only applies to the military operating as _law enforcement_. It in no way bars the military from giving people a fucking ride out of town.
No one had the slightest problem with the _legality_ of actions during Katrina. People had a problem with him and the entire White House constantly being a day behind _actually knowing things_, and then taking another day to respond.
Fred
Yeah, MHP is pretty and whumps butt without breaking a sweat.