Priorities + "Responsibility"
Shortly after Hurricane Katrina roared through South Mississippi knocking out electricity and communication systems, the White House ordered power restored to a pipeline that sends fuel to the Northeast.
That order - to restart two power substations in Collins that serve Colonial Pipeline Co. - delayed efforts by at least 24 hours to restore power to two rural hospitals and a number of water systems in the Pine Belt.
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"I considered it a presidential directive to get those pipelines operating," said Jim Compton, general manager of the South Mississippi Electric Power Association - which distributes power that rural electric cooperatives sell to consumers and businesses.
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Dan Jordan, manager of Southern Pines Electric Power Association, said Vice President Dick Cheney's office called and left voice mails twice shortly after the storm struck, saying the Collins substations needed power restored immediately.Jordan dated the first call the night of Aug. 30 and the second call the morning of Aug. 31. Southern Pines supplies electricity to the substation that powers the Colonial pipeline.
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Mindy Osborn, emergency room coordinator at Stone County Hospital, said the power was not restored until six days after the storm on Sept. 4. She didn't have the number of patients who were hospitalized during the week after the storm."Oh, yes, 24 hours earlier would have been a help," Osborn said.
Power crews diverted
Bush now takes responsibility for prioritizing gas for the North East U.S. over medical care for a storm battered South. How about some consequences?
Posted by b on September 13, 2005 at 17:15 UTC | Permalink | Comments (18)
Hunting Season
Dan Froomkin digests the current flurry of Bush Blew It reportings. His summary:
Judging from the blistering analyses in Time, Newsweek, and elsewhere these past few days, it turns out that Bush is in fact fidgety, cold and snappish in private. He yells at those who dare give him bad news and is therefore not surprisingly surrounded by an echo chamber of terrified sycophants. He is slow to comprehend concepts that don't emerge from his gut. He is uncomprehending of the speeches that he is given to read. And oh yes, one of his most significant legacies -- the immense post-Sept. 11 reorganization of the federal government which created the Homeland Security Department -- has failed a big test.
This does fit my views on Bush. That man has some dangerous and serious defects.
But those reporters writing these pieces work with the White House every day. They have known Bush's style and problems for years. So why didn´t they tell us? And why do they tell their stories now? Who has opened the hunting season?
Posted by b on September 12, 2005 at 18:38 UTC | Permalink | Comments (55)
WB: Ministry of Silly Walks
Billmon:Ministry of Silly Walks
Posted by b on September 10, 2005 at 6:01 UTC | Permalink | Comments (41)
Weekend Open Thread
(I'll be travelling this weekend and may not be able to go online until late Sunday.)
Your news, views, opinions ...
Posted by b on September 9, 2005 at 15:17 UTC | Permalink | Comments (70)
A.F.E.S. of A.
I am thinking for a while now about a concept some have named the "Authoritarian Free-Enterprise State" of America and how to cope with it. Anna-missed has one possible answer.
by anna missed (lifted from a comment)
Our government has ceased to be a government, and has instead become a corporate "facilitator". It has shorn itself from any public responsibility or morality or even civility in to most elementary sense. Its "soul" purpose now is to act only in the capital interest of its elite shareholders. Morality and ethics are determined only by the legal perimeters which they define as in the "interests" of the "nation".
The Iraq war and the hurricane Katrina only serve to illustrate how far down the road we have come, and beyond the obvious violations of morality, and so within their radicalness, fissures in the veneer will often appear -- when the blatant and glaring contradiction of the product being sold is seen with crystal clarity, as being fraudulent.
Unfortunately for the administration, their project of selling people their own demise, requires a major and risky advertising adventure that must continually be ratcheted up to contain ever greater lies. So as we see, in mats post, they must now create illusions of benevolence within a disaster, that mask, so obviously, their predictable corporate mentality, of opportunistic seizure of wealth without accountability.
Short of armed insurrection, or an epiphany within the press, or some miracle of renewed political representation, what we are left with is to channel our anger (within these fissures between product and advertising) into a culturally derived stake aimed at the heart of the beast -- its credibility -- because an illusion of America, is not America.
Posted by b on September 9, 2005 at 15:14 UTC | Permalink | Comments (71)
WB: Hitting the Wall
Billmon:Even the big, important questions -- the future of New Orleans, the threat of global warming, the paralyzing problems of race and poverty in America -- have lost their intellectual appeal. Too many people have died, and too much has been destroyed to try to make sense of it now. And as stupid and obnoxious and insane as the powers that be have been this past week, they don't seem very funny now ..
Posted by b on September 9, 2005 at 11:24 UTC | Permalink | Comments (64)
WB: The Color Line (++)
Billmon:III. Good Will Gesture
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II. This Just In From Planet White People
---I.
What a new, improved GOP New Orleans might look like is hard to say. If I had to guess, I'd predict it would resemble the old city about as much as the New Orleans Square exhibit at Disneyland -- except with fewer black people on the street.
Posted by b on September 8, 2005 at 19:31 UTC | Permalink | Comments (31)
WB: Katrina Update
Billmon:In other Katrina developments, Bush administration officials warned that the $51 billion it is seeking for relief was "just the beginning" of a string of special appropriations that would be used to award huge multi-million reconstruction contracts to politically well-connected contractors and consulting firms.
Posted by b on September 8, 2005 at 16:37 UTC | Permalink | Comments (35)
Reporters in a "War Zone"
..the city has now reached a near-saturation level of military and law enforcement. In the areas we visited, the red berets of the 82nd Airborne are visible on just about every block. National Guard soldiers are ubiquitous.
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While we were attempting to take pictures of the National Guard (a unit from Oklahoma) taking up positions outside a Brooks Brothers on the edge of the Quarter, the sergeant ordered us to the other side of the boulevard.
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At that same fire scene, a police officer from out of town raised the muzzle of her weapon and aimed it at members of the media... obvious members of the media... armed only with notepads.
I am just wondering when the first journo will be shot.
Posted by b on September 8, 2005 at 14:49 UTC | Permalink | Comments (11)
WB: A Better Class of Idiot
Billmon:Posted by b on September 7, 2005 at 15:53 UTC | Permalink | Comments (26)
Open One
News, views and visions* ...
*Those with visions should go see a doctor.
(Helmut Schmidt, ex-Chancellor of West Germany)
Posted by b on September 7, 2005 at 7:13 UTC | Permalink | Comments (72)
WB: The Potemkin President, Part II
Billmon:That oughta take the media's collective mind off this pesky flood business and get it back where it belongs -- in a vegetative coma.
Posted by b on September 7, 2005 at 7:09 UTC | Permalink | Comments (23)
WB: Dead or Alive
Billmon:Then the neocons would have to cook up some phony intelligence reports showing that tornados spawned by Saddam and Katrina met secretly over the Prague Airport and plotted to blow away Biloxi. And Condi Rice would have to go before the UN Security Council and recite a CIA fantasy script about the Indian Ocean's secret thunderbolts of death, and the chemical weapons trailers hidden in the eye of Cyclone Saddam.
Posted by b on September 7, 2005 at 7:02 UTC | Permalink | Comments (7)
WB: Tinfoil Time +
Billmon:But it's also hard to believe that one of the main bullet points in FEMA's disaster management plan reads: "Go directly to the local sheriff's office and cut all the telephone wires." Not unless Mike Brown has been taking his cues from watching Lee Marvin in The Dirty Dozen.
I. Tinfoil Time
Posted by b on September 7, 2005 at 6:57 UTC | Permalink | Comments (38)
WB: Dicked Again + Disaster Response
Billmon:I. Dicked Again
Posted by b on September 6, 2005 at 19:18 UTC | Permalink | Comments (59)
WB: Miami Vice
Billmon:In the very first Batman movie, there was a scene in which the Joker – Jack Nicholson – kicked off his campaign for mayor of Gotham City by standing on the steps of city hall handing wads of cash to passing citizens and yelling: “Vote for me, I’m giving away free money!”
Posted by b on September 6, 2005 at 16:56 UTC | Permalink | Comments (3)
WB: Noblesse Oblige
Billmon:Noblesse Oblige
Posted by b on September 6, 2005 at 6:50 UTC | Permalink | Comments (29)
U.S. Loses Territory in Iraq
While the world looks in astonishment at the U.S. state failure in New Orleans, a similar embarrassment takes place in Iraq. The guerrillas win and hold territory in Iraq for the first time - the U.S. loses ground.
The Washington Post reports:
Abu Musab Zarqawi's foreign-led Al Qaeda in Iraq took open control of a key western town at the Syrian border, deploying its guerrilla fighters in the streets and flying Zarqawi's black banner from rooftops, witnesses, residents and others in the city and surrounding villages said.
A sign newly posted at the entrance of Qaim declared, "Welcome to the Islamic Kingdom of Qaim." A statement posted in mosques described Qaim as an "Islamic kingdom liberated from the occupation."
The United States occupation force in Iraq has lost a strategic city in Iraq. The enemy, that was fought but not beaten in Afghanistan, has now captured a city in Iraq. A country in which it has never had, and would never have had a base, if the U.S. had not attacked that country.
Just as with Katrina, the officials are clueless:
U.S. Marine spokesman Capt. Jeffrey Pool said Marines had no word of any unusual activity in Qaim, but added it was possible that insurgents were acting in areas out of Americans' sight.
The local ARVN substitute was beaten, its leader killed by the insurgents.
A Sunni Arab tribe, the Albu Mahal tribe, simultaneously vowed to drive Zarqawi's fighters from the area, with the aid of the U.S. air strikes.
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.. a car bomb placed by Zarqawi's fighters in front of the home of a tribal leader, Sheikh Dhyad Ahmed, killed the sheikh and his son on Sunday, resident Mijbil Saied said.
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It was unclear whether any Iraqi forces were in Qaim. A Zarqawi fighter said any Marines and Iraqi forces had left Qaim, with "nothing left of their crosses."
This is a huge victory for the extremist forces. They capture a complete city from the U.S. forces and may even hold it for a while. They can now reinforce through Syria, as the Syrians are helpless against these forces too.
The few U.S. troops that are available in the huge Anbar province are up North near Mosul ghost fighting Zarqawi in Tal Afar, two hundred miles away from the western city of Qaim, and while in Baghdad the Interior Ministry in Baghdad is under attack.
The additional 25,000 troops that were supposed to reinforce the U.S. presence during the coming constitution vote and election have already been canceled. National guard troops from Mississippi and Louisiana are send back from Iraq further weakening the available force.
The Air Force can and will of course bomb Qaim to rubble. But bombs do not hold territory, boots on the ground do. But there are no more American boots available.
Posted by b on September 5, 2005 at 16:57 UTC | Permalink | Comments (96)
New Orleans' Biggest Enemy
The powers that are will try to keep as many people away from New Orleans as long as possible. Just like in Iraq, they will spend as much money as possible with friendly contractors, before hiring the first local guy. Keeping the locals out, will make this easier.
That little beast below will be their excuse, even after the city will have been pumped dry.
Mayor Ray Nagin said he had asked the President personally to immediately start spraying. With each new generation of mosquitoes, with each week, the problem will increase immensely.
So where are the spray planes? They are needed NOW.
It is also a general mistake to keep the population out, when provisioning is possible. You need the people to restart the economy. Who will reopen a shop, if there is nobody to buy stuff? Build tent cities in the dry parts of the city and ask people to come back. Pay them to clean the city. Start it NOW.
You can deliver electricity, water and sewage infrastructure to a tent city. There is no need to keep people without any privacy in the Astrodome. Start it NOW.
Posted by b on September 5, 2005 at 12:22 UTC | Permalink | Comments (46)
Open Thread 05-90
Other news and views ...
Posted by b on September 5, 2005 at 7:30 UTC | Permalink | Comments (29)