Hey, the President did his part, he ended his month long vacation two days early!

(okay, I'll try and stay above political pot shots like this one from now on.  But I'm pissed that more hasn't been done at ALL levels. This operation shows just how much we have to do to have any real disaster preparedness)

I think the right wing are going to quickly realize that is the most pathetic defense imaginable, and that the federal performance here was inexcusable. What was Nagin supposed to do with 1500 police officers and a couple of hundred thousand refugees? I think the Bush administration is going to experience permanent political damage from this. If these guys had a clue, as soon as they realized the levies had broken Tuesday lunchtime, the head of FEMA should have called the President back to Washington and it should have been action, action, action from then on. Large scale airborne mobilization of troops and resources to arrive within the critical first 72 hours, not dribbling in days and weeks later. There should have been a contingency plan for exactly this situation (if I knew about it from Scientific American, there is no excuse whatsoever for FEMA not to have known about it).

It's symptomatic of the whole Bush administration approach to life: too little, too late. Too few troops to secure Afghanistan, too few troops to prevent looting and an insurgency in Iraq, no recognition of global warming till the arctic is half melted, too little armor on Humvees for IEDs, no useful engagement of North Korea until after the latter has nukes, utterly clueless response to energy supply issues, too slow to respond to New Orleans. They aren't learning from their mistakes. They're a dangerous bunch of incompetents.

I found myself screaming at my radio yesterday when Cherthoff was being interviewed on NPR. I am sick of the stream of dishonest platitudes coming out of this crew. I can no longer watch a senior member of the administration on TV without wanting to puke.

No kidding.  This morning when I got up I really didn't care any more about how many oil rigs were missing, how much the production is down, or what the gas prices were.  Those problems are real, and will affect us all, but the national disgrace taking place in NO seems to have crossed a threshold for me.  Day after day all we got was more bungling and excuses, and in the meantime people were dying from a lack of medication, a lack of water, or a lack of food.

There was a story over at dKos about how the head of FEMA is basically an imcompetent screwup who got fired from his last job, and landed this one because of political patronage.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/9/2/122157/2495

It isn't just him either.  

Cheney is still on vacation in an undisclosed location.

Condi Rice was busy shopping for shoes in New York - someone got up in her face and asked her how she could shop for shoes when New Orleans is in serious trouble.  Her response was to have her security people throw the woman out.

This entire crew has repeatedly demonstrated a complete lack of competence in quite a number of areas.  The only job requirement in this administration seems to be an unwavering loyalty to Bush.  Competence and experience don't seem to be relevant - just an ability to repeat the talking points over and over.

I was glad to see the convoy arrive there today.  Better late than never, I guess.  They should have been arriving on Tuesday morning.

On the news they just said they thought there were 50,000 people still in NO that they need to go and find.  Who knows how long these people have gone without food or water.