In no particular order, but numbered for your convenience:
1. Not surprisingly, the folks who mandated that caskets returning from Iraq not be photographed or filmed have requested that the media not photograph the corpses of those who have died in the hurricane. I guess it might make people feel all sad and disgusted and could possibly remind them that George Antoinette and his court jesters are incompetent asswagons.
2. Select press are getting limited access to evacuees at the Houston Astrodome. Some outfits (FOX and CNN, naturally) are being allowed in while others are not. FEMA is blocking FM transmissions out of the dome, even if the FCC has has granted a temporary license. There are reports that evacuees are being beaten, raped, and murdered inside the Astrodome. I bet you won’t see any of that on FOX or CNN, though. [Via Boing Boing]
3. And, that apple apparently didn’t fall far from the ancestral tree. Babs made it clear that she thinks the storm refugees are better off now.
“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.” [Audio from public radio’s Marketplace, in Real Audio–Addendum.]
Because, obviously, the folks who have lost everything–family, homes, jobs–are making out like bandits at the expense of the good, kind, caring, patronizing Bushes of the world. Really. I mean, they were poor and disadvantaged and all, so this whole hurricane thing was doing them a favor, right?
Oh, and there was this little gem from the dowager countess Bush, too: “What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas…” Egad! Heaven forfend that those poor, black folks would want to sully Babs’ pristine state by trying to make homes for themselves there.
4. Meanwhile, Rick Santorum wants those who do not have the wherewithal to evacuate from impending disaster areas to be punished. It’s not enough that he wants to keep women barefoot and pregnant, he also wants to blame, then punish, the victims for not having the foresight to be wealthy enough to have the means to evacuate.
You have people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.
5. Once again, The Onion balances on a knife edge between reality and satire. Read it and weep and/or laugh.
6. Irony alert! Bush says: “Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people.” M’kaythen.
7. From Think Progress, a timeline of events (this comes in handy for #8).
8. There is a well orchestrated plan in action for minimizing the federal government’s responsibility in bolloxing things up, and, instead, pointing the finger (you know which one) at local and state governments. Part of that plan has thus far involved telling outright lies, so referring to the aforementioned timeline is a good idea.
9. What the fuck?! Why on earth weren’t FEMA relief workers already trained for field work? I’m sorry, but it is absolutely, 100% unacceptable that the federal agency in charge of emergency management does not have trained field workers on staff and on call. Can you imagine what people would have done if it had taken two days for relief workers to show up after the World Trade Center attacks? Much less a week or more? “I’m sorry, but we had to train people” is not the correct answer.
FEMA director Michael Brown sent an Aug. 29 memo to Chertoff, his boss, about five hours after the storm struck. It said employees would arrive in the Gulf coast areas within two days as part of an effort to “convey a positive image” of the government’s effort to help, the AP reported, citing the memo. “These were administrative, clerical and support functions,” not emergency workers, Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke said in an interview. They would have had to undergo at least a day of disaster training before being deployed.
And, I think it might be a little too late for “convey[ing] a positive image” of FEMA, as they’ve done too good a job of making themselves look like total fuckwits.
10. If there is a real and present danger of terrorist attack on US soil, now would be a perfect time to go for it. We’ve pretty much proved to anyone and everyone watching that we are totally and completely unprepared and unable to protect our homeland.
11. If a government cannot protect its own people, or, failing to do that, render timely and useful assistance to its citizens who are affected by disaster, then what is the purpose of that government? Instead of pointing fingers, BushCo should be bending over backwards to apologize, take responsibility, and do whatever it takes to quickly and effectively clean up the mess it has created. Instead, those affected have been taken advantage of by a government which has, whenever possible, abdicated responsibility. I expect “I didn’t do it” or “It wasn’t my fault” from a five-year old, not from adults in charge of a world superpower.
