Katrina

That he did this while the disaster was happening:

Seriously - McCain is not "critical" of Bush about Katrina. If it wasn't for this damn Democratic Primary the Democrats could be hitting him so hard over this right now. Show this picture of McCain smiling as people were dying in New Orleans. He really is as stupid as Bush.

But that's only when he really wants to. Apparently he didn't when it came to the trailers sent to New Orleans, following Hurricane Katrina:

Federal officials issued trailers to Hurricane Katrina victims even though some workplace safety tests detected high levels of formaldehyde at government staging areas for the structures just weeks after the storm, a lawyer for hundreds of occupants said Wednesday.

Documents from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration raise new questions about how much federal officials knew about the units, which were sent to tens of thousands of displaced residents, said attorney Anthony Buzbee. But they don't say whether the tests in the weeks after the August 2005 storm were conducted inside or outside the trailers.

Considering people have health problems from these trailers, it sure seems that something criminal may have happened. Of course our Homeland Security chair in the Senate won't do anything. That would be Lieberman - Bush's lap dog.

And it's too late to blame Brownie for it:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency manipulated scientific research to play down the danger posed by formaldehyde in trailers issued to hurricane victims, according to an investigation by congressional Democrats.

FEMA "ignored, hid and manipulated government research on the potential impact of long-term exposure to formaldehyde" on Katrina and Rita victims now living in FEMA trailers, said a letter written by Democrats on Monday.

Democrats on a House Science and Technology subcommittee wrote the letter to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. FEMA is part of the Homeland Security Department.

This is another case where the left would bring it up and the right would shoot it down as "conspiracy". Well it doesn't look so much like a conspiracy now.

While New Orleans still sits in ruins, we now find out that George W. Bush rejected almost all international aide:

As the winds and water of Hurricane Katrina were receding, presidential confidante Karen Hughes sent a cable from her State Department office to U.S. ambassadors worldwide.

Titled "Echo-Chamber Message" -- a public relations term for talking points designed to be repeated again and again -- the Sept. 7, 2005, directive was unmistakable: Assure the scores of countries that had pledged or donated aid at the height of the disaster that their largesse had provided Americans "practical help and moral support" and "highlight the concrete benefits hurricane victims are receiving."

Many of the U.S. diplomats who received the message, however, were beginning to witness a more embarrassing reality. They knew the U.S. government was turning down many allies' offers of manpower, supplies and expertise worth untold millions of dollars. Eventually the United States also would fail to collect most of the unprecedented outpouring of international cash assistance for Katrina's victims.

Allies offered $854 million in cash and in oil that was to be sold for cash. But only $40 million has been used so far for disaster victims or reconstruction, according to U.S. officials and contractors. Most of the aid went uncollected, including $400 million worth of oil. Some offers were withdrawn or redirected to private groups such as the Red Cross. The rest has been delayed by red tape and bureaucratic limits on how it can be spent.

This should spark a congressional investigation, but I doubt it will. Remember who runs the Senate Homeland Security Committee - Joe Lieberman. Bush didn't care about the people of New Orleans and neither does Lieberman. They just continue to give them a big "fuck you". Hopefully after 2008 the Democrats will hold enough of a majority in the Senate to tell Lieberman to piss off once and for all.

Bush forgot about the Katrina victims in his State of the Union address. Hell - it seems like a lot of America forgot about them (and we are only 3 days from Fat Tuesday). The Democrats in the House have not forgot though. They are introducing legislation to get more help to the storm ravaged area:

House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn today announced plans to introduce legislation to help cut the bureaucratic red tape and speed up funding assistance to areas in the Gulf Coast impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The legislation waives the 25 percent local funding match required under the Stafford Act and cancels the required repayment of Community Disaster Loans. Clyburn will introduce the legislation tomorrow and the Majority leadership has made a commitment to move the bill quickly through the House. In addition, Clyburn announced he will meet with committee chairmen on Friday to explore the long-term legislative issues relating to hurricane recovery.

Of course Bush would take his weekly radio address to try and prop up his image on Katrina:

Nearly one year after Hurricane Katrina created a humanitarian and political crisis, President George W. Bush said on Saturday the storm showed the government was unprepared to respond to a disaster of that magnitude and revealed "deep-seated poverty" in America.

Political fallout from the hurricane, which killed more than 1,000 people and displaced tens of thousands, was severe for Bush last year, sending his public opinion ratings to new lows amid widespread criticism the government's response had been too slow.

He returns next week to the scene of one of the worst natural disasters in American history to meet with local residents and officials to review progress in rebuilding New Orleans and communities along the Gulf Coast that were flooded and destroyed.

His trip to Louisiana and Mississippi comes as the election season heats up with Democrats trying to seize control of Congress from the president's Republican Party in November congressional elections.

"One year after the storms, the Gulf Coast continues down the long road to recovery. In Mississippi and Louisiana, we can see many encouraging signs of recovery and renewal, and many reminders that hard work still lies ahead," Bush said.

"We will stay until the job is done," he pledged in his weekly radio address from Maine, where he was visiting family.

So what has Bush and the Republican controlled congress done this year to address these problems Katrina "showed" us? Well let they tried to cut taxes for the wealthiest 1% of this nation again. They enacted the new Medicare program that ends up costing the poorest of our seniors more than it did before. They tried to ban gay marriage and flag burning.

The fact is they haven't done jack shit to address the problems. Congress did realize that FEMA is broken and voted to get rid of it and make a new agency. The White House of course disagrees with that, so we are here a year later with the same broken agency that can not be fixed because the Republicans can't agree. Our nation can send relief to the otherside of the world in a matter of days, yet one year later we still have a major American city sitting in ruins. A country is suppose to take care of their citizens. That is a belief that crosses party lines. Sadly we have a country run by a party that could care less about it's citizens. Well that is unless you make mega bucks, then your their pride and joy.

Here is an idea. We move all the people out of ground zero of Katrina and place them in the houses of the GOP members of Congress. In turn we take those members of congress, ship their greedy useless asses down their to live. They have to find jobs in the region and try to survive. How about that Senator Frist? Or how about you Senator Santorum? You would be crying like school girls after the first week.

While the media has been strongly focused on the Middle East, a bombshell was set off last week with Hurricane Katrina. I posted about FEMA not allowing citizens in their trailer parks access to reporters. The only way they can talk to reporters is if a FEMA official is with them (sounds like the old Saddam "minders"). This not only infringes on the first amendment of the victims, but also the first amendment protection our free press and the very fabric of our society.

Well the story is starting to get a little more notice and even has some law makers in an outrage:

Members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation said Monday that FEMA’s policy restricting media access to residents living in FEMA-managed trailer parks is absurd, outrageous and denies park residents their rights as American citizens.

“FEMA just strikes you as a bureaucracy that’s out of control,” said U.S. Rep. Bobby Jindal, R-Kenner. “You don’t lose your fundamental rights just because you’re living in temporary housing. It’s an outrageous pattern of behavior.”

Jindal was referring to a July 15 article in which The Advocate detailed an incident in a Federal Emergency Management Agency-operated trailer park in Morgan City where a reporter and photographer were ordered off of the site.

The two had been invited into a trailer occupied by resident Dekotha Devall and her family. But during the interview a security guard ordered the reporter and photographer to leave.

The security guard called the police after the reporter attempted to give Devall a business card, an act the guard said was forbidden

Bush always brags that he is out to protect civil rights, yet this is one of the most blatant attacks on those rights yet. There is no excuse of "national security" or "executive privilege". This is, pure and simple, an action you would expect to hear out of China or Cuba - not the United States. Bush should have shown immediate outrage over this, yet he hasn't mentioned it. I really can't blame him though without blaming the main stream media, who has ignored this story. They need to learn how to focus on more then one issue at a time. This story needs major play and hopefully the Democrats will take note of it.

First they get victimized by the Government's inactions during Katrina. Now they get their Constitutional rights shredded by FEMA:

Residents of trailer parks set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to house hurricane victims in Louisiana aren't allowed to talk to the press without an official escort, The (Baton Rouge) Advocate reported.

In one instance, a security guard ordered an Advocate reporter out of a trailer during an interview in Morgan City. Similar FEMA rules were enforced in Davant, in Plaquemines Parish.

FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Rodi wouldn't say whether the security guards' actions complied with FEMA policy, saying the matter was being reviewed. But she confirmed that FEMA does not allow the news media to speak alone to residents in their trailers.

"If a resident invites the media to the trailer, they have to be escorted by a FEMA representative who sits in on the interview," Rodi told the newspaper for its July 15 report. "That's just a policy."

This is absolutely ridiculous. These people have gone through hell time and time again and this is how our government treats them - like some communist nation! The Democrats in Congress need to put this out in the public more so and take action to stop this censorship. This shows the type of government we have when Republicans are in charge.

When you can't manage situations, then you must throw money at it. That seems to be the Republican way of dealing things and it causes a big mess and a bigger burden for the U.S. tax payer:

Among the many superlatives associated with Hurricane Katrina can now be added this one: it produced one of the most extraordinary displays of scams, schemes and stupefying bureaucratic bungles in modern history, costing taxpayers up to $2 billion.

A hotel owner in Sugar Land, Tex., has been charged with submitting $232,000 in bills for phantom victims. And roughly 1,100 prison inmates across the Gulf Coast apparently collected more than $10 million in rental and disaster-relief assistance.

There are the bureaucrats who ordered nearly half a billion dollars worth of mobile homes that are still empty, and renovations for a shelter at a former Alabama Army base that cost about $416,000 per evacuee.

And there is the Illinois woman who tried to collect federal benefits by claiming she watched her two daughters drown in the rising New Orleans waters. In fact, prosecutors say, the children did not exist.

So what has this lack of oversight on the part of our government cost us? Take your blood pressure medicine then read on:

The estimate of up to $2 billion in fraud and waste represents nearly 11 percent of the $19 billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June, or about 6 percent of total money that has been obligated.

Congress has said FEMA is broken, as well as the media and a vast number of Americans. Of course old "stay the course" Bush doesn't feel that way. Well here is another perfect example of just how broken FEMA is. Another part of our government destroyed by this administration and we are left to clean up the mess. Incompetence does not even begin to describe it.

Is it no wonder our country is hurting financially?

The government doled out as much as $1.4 billion in bogus assistance to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, getting hoodwinked to pay for season football tickets, a tropical vacation and even a divorce lawyer, congressional investigators have found.

Prison inmates, a supposed victim who used a New Orleans cemetery for a home address, and a person who spent 70 days at a Hawaiian hotel all were able to wrongly get taxpayer help, according to evidence that gives a new black eye to the nation's disaster relief agency.

Federal investigators even informed Congress that one man apparently used FEMA assistance money for a sex change operation.

Agents from the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, went undercover to expose the ease of receiving disaster expense checks from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

You fill top government positions with cronies and this is what you get - excessive waste of tax payers money. We were told there would be great oversight of the money spent in the Gulf and that oversight could only come from the federal level. Well guess what - they have failed again. How many more failures can we allow to go unanswered by Bush and his crony administration?

This should send a real message to the people whose lives were changed last year by Katrina. Instead of worrying about the fact that 1000s of U.S. citizens were losing their lives while hundreds of thousands had lost their homes, the White House instead worried about who was taking the blame for the failures the storm exposed.

From CNN:

The former emergency management chief who quit amid widespread criticism over his handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina said he received an e-mail before his resignation stating President Bush was glad to see the Oval Office had dodged most of the criticism.

Michael Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said Friday that he received the e-mail five days before his resignation from a high-level White House official whom he declined to identify.

A couple things here. First off, placing blame should not have even been brought up. Instead the White House should have focused solely on how to save the citizens down there and get the aide needed to those that desperately needed it. Hey George - WWJB (Who Whould Jesus Blame).

When you think about last year's deadly hurricane season, you also must think about the environment. They do go hand in hand and we hear warnings all the time that our Earth is passing the point of no return. Global warming is a serious issue that requires serious actions.

So how does Senate address this serious issue? They do so by holding the results of global warming hostage. In exchange they want something that will also increase global warming and devastate our environment even more.

A last-minute deal to secure the vote of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) on a $2.8 trillion budget plan has given new life to the Republican drive to open Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

The budget blueprint for fiscal 2007, which will begin in October, includes a $10 billion Gulf Coast restoration fund that would be financed from the leasing of arctic refuge drilling rights, revenue from new drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf of the Gulf of Mexico and further sales of the broadcast spectrum. With that provision in hand, Landrieu cast the only Democratic vote for the budget resolution, which squeaked through Thursday night, 51 to 49.

The Family Research Council has released a statement "Thanking President Bush" for his executive order today:

WASHINGTON, March 8 /U.S. Newsdesk/ -- Yesterday, President Bush ordered the Department of Homeland Security to establish a center for faith-based aid which will be tasked with integrating faith-based groups into federal disaster response efforts.

Family Research Council (FRC) President Tony Perkins released the following statement:

"I thank the President for acting quickly to establish a faith-based office in the Department of Homeland Security. A faith-based office will make progress in eliminating the red-tape barriers which have plagued FEMA's efforts to coordinate with faith-based groups. I know from personal experience during Hurricane Katrina that churches and para-church ministries played an important and irreplaceable role in the relief and recovery from that unprecedented storm.

"The President's orders should improve the government's response in future natural or man-made disasters. The order will hopefully replace the prevailing mindset in DHS that the wall separating church and state prevents government from working with churches and synagogues to help our citizens."

That last line I highlighted is the one that gets me. Katrina showed us that the faith based and other groups worked fine to get in and help out victims. The "wall" was between federal and state/local officals. We heard reports of firefighters and paramedics being turned away while people were still trapped and dying.

The FRC of course is an advocate to remove the separation of church and state and they will exploit whatever they can to get that democracy saving principle abolished.

Homeland Security and FEMA's failures in Katrina are now getting another round of attention from the President. Actually he is using the failures to support his long time plan of getting "faith based" and "community initiative" programs to take a larger roll in disaster relief. He did this by executive order today:

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to help the Federal Government coordinate a national effort to expand opportunities for faith-based and other community organizations and to strengthen their capacity to better meet America's social and community needs, it is hereby ordered as follows:

You can read the rest of it here. Of course Bush has emphasis on "faith based" as that is his political base also. Actually these organizations were the ones that helped the most in Katrina. Now that he is screwing with them and adding another layer of bureaucracy to the system we might not even be able to rely upon them in future disasters. He needs to fix the problems he has already created before trying to create more problems.

With all the talk recently on Katrina and the video that was released of Bush on theat conference call I felt this story appropriate. Thew comment about firefighters searching for several months until  funding ran out is well..... just disturbing. As seems the case with Bush and his administration, money is more important that people.

NEW ORLEANS, United States (AFP) - Six months after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, bodies are still being pulled out of wrecked and rotting homes.

Firefighters in hard hats with cadaver dogs found the latest victim on Monday in a house that had been inspected months ago, though clearly not well enough.

It was the second corpse found since recovery efforts resumed last Friday, said Steve Glynn, chief of special operations for the New Orleans Fire Department.

The race and gender of the body located Monday found in the black Lower Ninth Ward, could not be determined, Glynn said.

"I don't want to be too graphic," Glynn said. "But it was confusing at first."

The official door-to-door search of New Orleans ended October 3 with a death toll of 972. Since then, at least 131 more bodies have been found. Some by officials, some by horror-struck friends and family members, some even by insurance inspectors.

Firefighters continued to search homes for a few more months, but had to stop in December when their funding ran out.