As we have watched New Orleans spiral into cycle of anarchy and violence worthy that seems to more resemble Haiti or Somalia (I just spoke with a former US military official who told me that Kunar province, which is in the Pashtun region of Afghanistan, looked nothing like this after the fall of the Taliban) than our own country, it is important to remember that those who turned the city into a tribute to inhumanity worthy of "Lord of the Flies" do not represent the majority of the city's population.
Dr. Ledeen wrote up an impressive tribute to New Orleans over on National Review in which he compares the city to Naples, which is quite high praise indeed coming from one as appreciative and affectionate of Naples and its culture as Ledeen. And so as the city remains in anarchy and the inevitable spotlight starts to descend on both local corruption leading up to the hurricane and why a sizeable number of the police force appears to have thrown in with the looters, it is important to remember the rich culture of New Orleans and all of the good and decent people who lived there.
William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams, okay - but don't forget Dr. John, Professor Longhair, Champion Jack Dupree, James Booker, and Guitar Slim. And Guitar Slim, Jr.
What are the actual statistics on this? Or is this another meme that has gotten out of control, because there are some dramatic videos and exciting stories that tap into people's hopes and fears?
Of the people who broke into stores, how many were getting food and water for their families or others in need? Given the situation there, I don't blame them at all. I would have done exactly the same thing for my family, and so would you. Anyone who talks about "zero tolerance" in this context is an idiot.
Of the remaining people, some broke into stores and took things of value, but not for survival. (I've got to say, taking a TV in a shopping cart when your city is flooding doesn't seem particularly bright.) This has to be stopped to preserve law and order, but this isn't Somalia yet. And even here, if I had my family to protect, and no resources, laying in something of value that I could trade for food and water later might look pretty attractive as civilization crumbles around me. What would you do? If you didn't have a gun, lots of other people did, you wanted one, and you could grab one at the local unoccupied WalMart, would you do it?
OK, some of the people were protecting their families, perhaps, but some are nut-cases and some are genuine bad guys. Right. But how many?
Someone shot at a rescue helicopter. Did this happen once, or does it happen every time a rescue helicopter comes? It's bad no matter what, but you have to expect isolated nuts and bad guys in this situation. Are there really large numbers of organized gangs taking control of territory?
I hear all these stories, and some of them have pictures or videos. But we know how that distorts reality. (You don't want people talking about Bush playing that guitar, do you?) So don't play the same game with violence in New Orleans.
Otherwise, it sounds like everyone is lining up to blame the victims here, to make sure no one at higher levels bears any responsibility. Except God, who sent Katrina, of course.
The people who opened fire on medical convoys or the ones who decided that being at the Superdome was a great opportunity to start raping people comes to mind ...
There are plenty of good, decent people who got trapped in the middle of this in New Orleans, some of whom were forced to take food in order to fend for themselves. That's understandable under the situation ... the pond (bayou?) scum who chose to use this disaster as an excuse to prey on their fellow men. As far as statistics are concerned, that can wait until we've buried the dead.
Yes it's very bad. There is no exaggeration. Even worse than you could comprehend.
I tried to list them (from Fox, MSNBC, CNN) but the content filter won't let me. Let's just say that ALL the nets have stated the criminal acts are widespread and horrific.
I'm not going to defend the genuine criminals there. I'm sure there are some. I'd bet you dollars to donuts it's less than the media portrayals suggest. (Or is the MSM accurate here, while it exaggerates the bad news in Iraq, eh?) But don't talk about "zero tolerance", or you're going to be hanging the proverbial kid who steals a loaf of bread.
Meanwhile, I'm seeing a frantic effort to try to isolate the Bush administration from responsibility for competent governance, yet again.
I'm sure you're going to dismiss me as a "Bush basher", but look at the pattern.
Now I'm seeing all this buck-passing. The governors should have done this. They mayors should have done that. No one could have anticipated the levees breaking. (Hah!) The looters make it impossible to help anyone. Come on!
Not to mention the subtext that it's really the fault of those Muslims, and Blacks, and poor people. If they don't have money for bus tickets, they should drive! "Let them eat cake!"
This goes way beyond incompetence. The most charitable interpretation I can imagine for this pattern is that the Bush administration lives in Fantasyland. The decision-makers have built a world of illusion, in which everything works out their way. They actively resist evidence that this illusory world might not be the real world, in which their actions have consequences different from what they hope.
Grownups, IMHO, actively seek out contrary evidence, to test and improve their understanding of the world they live and act in. This is an everyday version of the scientific method, but that gets into a whole other discussion.
But these people have power, so they take their actions, consequences happen. Levees break. People drown and die of thirst. Terrorists rejoice and flock to Iraq to enjoy and encourage the collapse of civilization there. (We may now be making slow and painful progress in Iraq, climbing out of a hole where the Bush administration did a lot of the digging.) The deficit continues to spiral out of control, and the administration doesn't know how to be responsible about spending. No one worries about global climate change. But it's always someone else's fault.
As far as I can tell, the Bush administration has no concept of governance. Of planning for multiple contingencies, taking into account uncertainty about what's happening. Of making responsible investments for the future while restraining discretionary spending.
They just don't know how to govern. They live in Fantasyland.
I apologize for losing my temper here, but this is truly awful.
Beard,
1 - The Army wasn't "woefully inadequate" to maintain law and order on the ground - it restored it in the cities, and most of the looting took place BEFORE the Army arrived. As for us making "slow, painful" progress, we've been making such from the time Hussein was overthrown. Terrorists aren't "rejoicing," they're on the strategic defensive - they have no reason to rejoice.
2 - That "surplus" and the present "deficit" are mostly on paper; the "deficits" of the Reagan years were outgrown by the economy pretty rapidly. Rebates and tax breaks aree always the right approach, because it isn't the government's money, it's the taxpayers'. They ALWAYS make sense.
3 - Is it possible that most of the lack of preparation was local, not federal? Blame them instead of the government here.
The local government is to blame for the lack of order in New Orleans. The mayor and governor are total incompetents, corrupt to the core. To be successful, any effective rescue effort would have had to assassinate the mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana, in order to get the obstructionists out of the way. Then the rescue and restoration of order could take place.
Beard, your attempt to shift blame away from the state and city governments is quite irrational. Those levels had the responsibility to plan for, and execute, the emergency plans for their localities.
In attempting to mix in a comparison to Iraq, your comments appear to intentionally omit any consideration of the fact that an immense host of problems in Iraq - a country whose institutions and infrastructure had been collapsing for a dozen years - were planned for and dealt with. Your standards seem to be based on a comparison to what the starship Enterprise could accomplish in a one hour episode. Your criticisms smack of armchair generalship.
Bill Funt [#7],
You qualify as a terrorist, Pat Robertson division (mouth only). Did you seriously call for the assassination of the mayor and governor? Go home, take a long careful look in the mirror, and think about what you said and what you really believe.
If that was meant as a joke, it's one of those jokes like shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater, or "Suicide Bomber" on a crowded bridge. It isn't even a tiny bit funny, and you should know it.
"the "deficits" of the Reagan years were outgrown by the economy pretty rapidly."
Huh?
What exactly is that supposed to mean?
"Beard, your attempt to shift blame away from the state and city governments is quite irrational. Those levels had the responsibility to plan for, and execute, the emergency plans for their localities."
Not according to the Dept. of Homeland Security. From their own website.
In the event of a terrorist attack, natural disaster or other large-scale emergency, the Department of Homeland Security will assume primary responsibility on March 1st for ensuring that emergency response professionals are prepared for any situation. This will entail providing a coordinated, comprehensive federal response to any large-scale crisis and mounting a swift and effective recovery effort. The new Department will also prioritize the important issue of citizen preparedness. Educating America's families on how best to prepare their homes for a disaster and tips for citizens on how to respond in a crisis will be given special attention at DHS.
http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/theme_home2.jsp
You guys need to look around and realize that this is not the time to make excuses for this fiasco.
Mike Daly [#6],
1 - I think that the Winds of War guys here would confirm the woeful inadequacy of our troops to handle the challenge of the disorder throughout Iraq after the fall of Baghdad. The cities were not consistently under the rule of law, either ours or Iraqi, much less the countryside. Our Army performed valiantly, and has done heroic things in an extremely difficult situation.
There is controversy about whether we now see light at the end of the tunnel or not. (I happen to think we do, with some trepidation.) But there is no legitimate controversy, I believe, that Iraq was seriously out of control for quite a few months after the fall of Baghdad.
2 - Do you save up to make important investments? What about your children's college education? Why not just spend that on a fancy car, or a really spectacular high-school graduation party? It's your money, after all!
You do the right thing there because you're an adult, and you are capable of deferring gratification to accumulate the capital to do something large and expensive. So are (at least some) citizens. We think it's worthwhile to invest in the Interstate Highway System, the Internet, biomedical research, and the national defense, among other things.
How do we do that? We get together and decide what's important by voting on it (remember voting?). Then we hire some people to invest our money the way we want it done.
Now, we may have some significant disagreements about whether the folks we've hired are currently doing a good job, and we have to decide whether to stick with these or get some new ones. That's what politics is about. But saying, "It's not the government's money, it's the taxpayers'." is misleading (since it's both), and is probably deliberately trying to distract people from the truth.
3 - Don't worry, there's plenty of blame to go around. The state and local governments will get their share. But you know, even when it's five days out in the Gulf of Mexico, that a major hurricane is a federal problem. It will necessarily cut across states. It will require a level of resources that only the federal government has. And it's a responsibility that the federal government has historically assumed.
What I see here is an attempt (not successful, I believe), to distract people from the fact that the Bush administration has simply failed to perform one of the basic functions of government at a competent level.
Robin Roberts [#8],
Davebo [#11] has done an excellent job of sinking your first point.
As to the second, the evidence suggests to me that we are making, as I said, slow and painful but forward progress in Iraq, along the many fronts that have to be addressed. But I am not aware (and I have been looking) that an "immense host of problems in Iraq ... were planned for and dealt with."
The problems we need to plan for and deal with in Iraq include: law and order in the streets, water treatment and distribution, sewage collection and treatment, electricity generation and distribution, oil production, shipping via pipelines, and exporting, establishing democratic local and state governments, establishing schools, getting jobs for Iraqis, encouraging the growth of Iraqi industry and employment, and on, and on, and on. Yes, we are making progress on many of these. But it's often three steps forward and two steps back, as the insurgents attack pipelines and other infrastructure. I don't know of a single area where a systemic problem in Iraq has been "planned for and dealt with", in the sense that it's solved.
The net progress is forward, but it's a long slog. I'm not the one who thought Iraq's problems would be solved in a one-hour episode. The closest person to that opinion is Donald Rumsfeld, who explicitly predicted that we would be embraced by the Iraqis like the Allied troops entering Paris in 1944, and we'd be out of Iraq in a short time. He's one of the people living in Fantasyland.
Actually Beard, what Davebo has done is a fine job of taking materials out of context. The Dept of Homeland Security is taking primary responsibility in the context of the Federal government. It does not and legally cannot mean that it takes responsibility away from the local government.
Good job of misrepresentation Davebo.
And by the way, Beard you are misrepresenting Rumsfeld's comments yourself.
Robin.
Care to explain how I took it out of context? I posted the link to the page.
You have a habit of making such unsupported claims about my comments here.
Davebo, my comment is supported by the DHS page itself. Which you continue to misrepresent.
The Dept of Homeland Security page is describing its role within the Federal government. Even Davebo should know that the Constitution does not allow the Federal government to supplant the state and local governments in this realm. The statutes and executive orders that the page Davebo wilfully misrepresents is paraphrasing confer upon DHS primary responsibilities within the Federal government.
This is clear from the statutes organizing the DHS which can be found in Title 6 of the USC, sections 311 et seq.
DHS cannot force the state and local governments to act. Which is why the President was begging Mayor Nagin to begin mandatory evacuations in the face of Nagin's dawdling.
Beard -
Why would Bush need to drown everybody in New Orleans? Couldn't he just poison them all with arsenic, like he does to children?
Since he plans to destroy the entire earth anyway, why bother at all? It's like vandalizing the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Looking forward to your response, which hopefully will include references to Halliburton and Diebold.
Beard, you norom, even you should understand that the word assassinate can take on more than one meaning. The meaning I intended was merely in the sense of getting the incompetent local obstructionists out of the way so that the professionals from the outside can get in unencumbered, and do what must be done.
Why didn't the stupid incompetent mayor and governor declare martial law in the city immediately, when it was clear they couldn't keep the criminals confined? Why didn't they use all the hundreds of city controlled buses to help the old, sick, weak, and disabled people get out immediately? Why did the mayor and the governor drag their feet so long? They are Louisiana leaches, draining the life out of the peopld of New Orleans.
Glen WIshard: I expected that some readers would simply use the retort "Bush basher" to avoid thinking about what I was actually saying. I'll be happy to respond to a comment about what I actually wrote.
Bill Funt: You are using the Pat Robertson defense, and it doesn't work any better for you than for him. The meaning of the word "assassinate" is actually pretty clear. Nobody should be calling for the assassination of government officials, as a joke, as a metaphor, or anything.
No, you norom, you don't have a clue. I was once a leftist, although after 9/11 that was no longer tenable. One of the leftist tendencies I have retained, however, is to use words to mean anything I want them to mean. That's just the way it is for us leftists, and former leftists. We believe in a malleable tongue.
Interestingly, no where in the city of New Orleans emergency plan does it state that they are supposed to sit on their hands and await Michael Chertoff's orders.
Imagine that.
Beard: I expected that some readers would simply use the retort "Bush basher" to avoid thinking about what I was actually saying.
Why did you expect that? I thought Bush bashers were oblivious to their total lack of credibility.
Anyway, there was little need to think about what you said, since Tom V. already blamed the entire human condition on Bush in an earlier thread.
The only thing left for you to add is to accuse Bush of inventing Original Sin.
Beard, my guess is that you don't live on the Gulf Coast.
TexasGal: Go on ...
Beard -- as a defender of Ray Nagin (somewhat) I am going to have to explain what's what in New Orleans as far as geography and culture. I lived there in 1995-98. Disclaimer: I met Ray Nagin once and was very impressed. The man has a lot of charisma and was a very good executive at Comcast. He supported Bobby Jindal over Blanco and gave to Bush in 2000.
However, he did indeed fail. Once he failed to evacuate about 100-200,000 desperately poor people in New Orleans, they would be stuck in a city without power, water, sewage, and food and they would start to die. Period. Even if the Feds had moved heaven and earth people would have died in the horrific Louisiana heat, under filthy and squalid conditions. This is just reality.
Next: in 1994 August a freak rainstorm dumped 18 inches in a couple of hours, flooding the city and overwhelming the pumps. Nagin had only to look back to see measures needed: move every city vehicle to the neutral ground (what New Orleans natives call the median) on St. Charles and other streets around the Riverbend and Uptown areas (highest in the city). Even I KNEW this and was told repeatedly as a new arrival by longtime residents, when it starts to really pour move you car there so it's not flooded. This alone would have preserved buses and allowed evac of the Convention Center over to the West Bank across the Crescent City bridge where there was power, water, sewage, and food. It would have saved hundreds of lives no doubt.
Also: New Orleans had a lot of near misses, most notably Ivan and 1998's Hurrican Georges. Which people in New Orleans found to be a "bust" and led to the idea of being blessed by God and no danger from the Hurrican. I can well understand who Bush (who knew that hurricanes require evac) would beg Blanco to force Nagin to issue a Mandatory Evacuation order late Saturday Night when it was too late for most of the desperately poor.
In Contrast Mississippi and Alabama issued Mandatory Evac orders on FRIDAY giving folks 48 hours notice. The logistics were clear, evacing about 100-200 people is a MASSIVE undertaking so you need as much time and heroic effort as possible. If you need to fight with the teamsters or whoever, do it because every person you evac is a life saved. Period.
Ray Nagin who I've defended in the Past and will continue to do so, simply failed in this, and deserves the blame of putting about 100,000 plus people in this mess. He failed in his duty to get them out and once it all came apart basically forted up in his office and didn't go out. Rudy and Haley Barbour and Alabama's Gov. went out and PERSONALLY smacked heads to get things going. BOBBY JINDAL told Fox that he was holding "come to Jesus" meeting with the National Guard and FEMA to force them to throw out the rule book and just save people. Properly, this is Nagin's job.
As it was to prepare both the Convention Center and Superdome with lots of water, food, emergency generators, portable toilets, and enough armed security to deter violence in the locations. Nagin failed here too.
Once the Hurricane passed through, most lines of transport were just GONE. The main roads from Kenner's Louis Armstrong Airport are gone. Metarie is gone. St. Bernard Parish is gone. Plaquemines and St. Tammany are gone. There's still many people there who are also probably dying on their rooftops or are trapped in attics. I-10 is just GONE. It's the main route to New Orleans, particularly from the West which is untouched and has power, food, sewage, and water. Trucking food, water, medical supplies, to the trapped city has to go south first, then up to New Orleans from the south. Same for evacuation.
This makes pre-positioning assets and moving them into staging areas quickly a must. This is Blanco's job and wasn't done. Helicopters, trucks, food, water, comm equipment were way out of place and not close to New Orleans where they needed to be. Blanco failed there.
By late Tuesday or early Wed it should have been obvious that Nagin had lost control of the city and that tens of thousands at the Superdome, Convention Center, and overpasses needed rescuing immediately. Blanco waited for the Feds to basically take charge, instead of working with what she had and organizing a citizen convoy to get people out at least from the Convention Center to Baton Rouge. Even 2,000 SUVs going round-trip from Baton Rouge to the Convention Center would have been able to evacuate somewhere southwards of 10,000 people which is better than nothing, particularly since many were elderly, handicapped, or infants. Would have required on the fly logistics to get gas stops set up on the routes, and a call to fellow citizens, but could have been done. It SHOULD have been done. Blanco just sat around crying on TV; until late Thursday night when it was too late.
Bush gets credit from me for prodding Blanco and Nagin (who simply seems to have not believed New Orleans would get hit or the risk was real, believe me you can't understand that until you've lived in New Orleans then it makes sense, New Orleans is not in America or even the 20th Century, much less the 21st). Where he deserves some blame is for not realizing on Wed that the entire political leadership in Louisiana had failed and needed his personal touch.
Bush on Wed should have flown to Baton Rouge, asked Blanco to step aside and personally taken charge of the situation, drafting either Tommy Franks or Norman Schwarzkopf to assist him with logistics and ask Congress to declare martial law in New Orleans. This would have allowed him to insert the 82nd Airborne early, by Thursday, to provide security that would have saved hundreds of lives. By taking that personally and with the help of a logistics expert, Bush would have blown away much as Rudy did on 9/11 the battling jurisdiction and paralysis by rulebook that seems to have stymied the rescue effort. He probably would have set up some sort of massive convoy to evac all of New Orleans, run it day and night.
However, this failure to take over completely, is understandable. Bush dealt with Mike Foster not Blanco as Governor, and Foster though somewhat a neanderthal conservative, at least got things done. I've seen folks who detested Foster write that they wished he was still Governor because he would have drafted anyone he could to come down and stop the horrible violence in New Orleans that preyed on the weak and helpless. Foster gave the illusion that Louisiana politicians were somewhat competent which we can see they are not.
This situation is unique to Louisiana. Last year we had something like five major hurricanes and favorable geography (essentially, redundant interstates which do not exist in Louisiana) and competent government made them not horrors as we've seen in New Orleans. Unless you've lived there you have no idea of the incompetence and failure of the political class.
TexasGal: Go on ...
I've lived on the Texas Gulf Coast all my life, and I'm very familiar with who is responsible for what in the preparedness plan since I work over 30 years for the local government. Others here have addressed those duties to you.
I watched Katrina come across FL and kept my eye on her. When I saw she was headed to NO I prayed they had evacuated the city I've been there many times. Here's the body of my email back to a friend that was checking on me:
08/27/05 I've been sick just thinking about what they got coming their way. It's a damn big storm and images of the 1900 Galveston storm of bodies floating into the Gulf are running thru my head. I hope most of the people heeded the call to get out, but I hate to think about the poor animals and pets left behind. This is going to be really bad. I might get a little of the rain and wind. At least I'm on the back side! That I'm prepared for!!
Those of us without political agendas down here in Texas could see this coming. The city did not prepare and the state appears to not have helped.
This is non-essential information. I merely want to share something. I'm from down there and live in NYC now. I practically grew up in N.O., making it my weekend escape from oppressive Mississippi. I can't stop reading anything and everything about what's happening there now (I can't watch the news; it's too disgusting, the dumbing-down of something so monumental and disastrous). Please take a look at this very brief piece. It's inconsequential to the horror and the mass victimization, but it's a nice, quick respite, pretty evocative of what I remember of that beautiful city: 'Kirkus' Looks Back at the New Orleans of a Million Ignatius Reillys
TexasGal,
Actually, I do live a few hundred miles from the Gulf, but not on the coast. I was also watching Katrina barrel in, and hoping we would dodge the bullet once again. We didn't.
LA and NO have never been paragons of good government. There is plenty of blame for the NO mayor and the LA governor. But they aren't my mayor or my governor. On the other hand, GWB is my president, and I have seen his administration seriously dropping the ball on a number of major decisions that are going to plague us for decades to come.
I'm not excusing the mayor or the governor, or saying that Bush sent the hurricane himself. Read my post [#5] above, and the subsequent discussion. But I do think that the federal government has shown a pattern of more than incompetence, of which this is only the most recent example. And it bothers me to see the huge effort to get him off the hook, yet again.
See the pattern? I don't think that George W. Bush is the devil incarnate. I think he's a reasonably nice guy with a lot of powerful friends, who collectively believe a bunch of fantasies that fail to resemble the real world in important ways, and who now hold the most powerful positions in the world.
They may even be right about some things. But this pattern of incompetence means they shouldn't hold the power they do. I live in fear of what they'll do next, and I pray for our future.
P.S. I'm no political fan of Rick Perry, by any means, but I've got to say that he is the one person on the scene who has been acting like a leader these days.
Beard, you've failed to find any way to state what the President has "dropped the ball" on. The Bush administration didn't control the evacuation - couldn't in any legal or practical way.
And that is really the only thing that could have made any difference to events.
Jim Rockford,
You know better than I do what a snakepit LA and NO politics is, and I'm sure that Nagin and Blanco deserve plenty of blame. You've been better than most, here, in admitting that Bush deserves some of the blame, but what I'm seeing is a massive spin campaign to shuck all the blame off on someone else, yet again.
To say that the Federal Government was helpless without the formal request from Mayor or Governor is just silly. Even if they were waiting for the paperwork, you start the logistics. When Katrina was still approaching Florida, they new they had a federal disaster looming. Even if they didn't know exactly where it would hit, they could have been a lot better prepared than they were.
Yes, every disaster is chaotic, but we're not talking the "Fog of War" here. They had days and days of advanced warning to look at alternate scenarios, and to prepare the resources they would need to deal with them.
If this is how they respond to Katrina, how can we have any confidence about how they would respond to a nuke in LA?
As I said in my response to TexasGal above, the incompetence we're seeing at the logistics level here, that is costing tens of thousands of lives, is really just a symptom of the deeper rot at the top, where our leaders live in Fantasyland. That could cost us millions of lives.
Beard, you claim incompetence at the logistical level, but that is still without any specifics.
"For the decade prior to joining the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Director Michael Brown was commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, a Colorado-based group that organizes breeders and horse shows."
Chicago Tribune
FEMA head takes heat in spotlight
September 4, 2005
"Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."
Boston Herald
Brown pushed from last job
September 3, 2005
"His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating."
Knight Ridder News Service
Head of FEMA has an unlikely background
September 3, 2005
"But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water."
...
"Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
Keith Olbermann
An irrelevant cut and paste job.
You're right Beard. I hold Bush accountable for not ordering the US Military into New Orleans on Thursday to take control of the city and thereby illegally usurping the authority of the Governor of the State of Lousiana as stated in the Constitution of the United States which would have placed him right smack dab in the middle of an impeachment process. The elected officials of LA evidently don't have any experience with Cat 5 hurricanes!