The little paranoid voice that sometimes comes into my head said: They delayed aid to see how far they could push people before people would begin pushing back.

Posted by: tee | Sep 3 2005 20:52 utc | 4

So you may ask what’s the pay off? Why do this. Well the obivous answer is New Orleans redevelopment. Make the conditions so horrible that EVERYONE leaves, buy the property for pennies on the dollar and build what you want. The beauty is the “relief” packages lubricrate the whole processs with billions of tax payer money.

And the winner is….(the envelope, please)….Halliburton/KBR, gaining total control over the midcontinent shipping nexus–oil, grain, transportation.
DU in the Middle East, toxic sludge in NOLA, WTO/NAFTA slaves desperate for work…no wonder we haven’t seen much of Emperor Dick, drooling over the newest addition to the Evil Empire.

Posted by: catlady | Sep 3 2005 21:12 utc | 6

Should Billmon’s “Round up the Usual Suspects” post have ended as it did? Is something supposed to come after “House Speaker Tom DeLay, however, announced that the House” ??

Posted by: ferd | Sep 3 2005 21:42 utc | 8

What does John Fund actually know how to do besides run his word processor, his mouth, and his penis to practice sequential incest.

Posted by: eftsoons | Sep 3 2005 22:41 utc | 10

The DKos story says Bush gave permission for rescue operatiosn to commence on Thursday. I gather that means he did these two things first:
1) recess appoint Fisher
2) say that he liked the response but not the results
Which did come first, the permission or the satisfaction with the response?

Posted by: citizen | Sep 4 2005 0:54 utc | 12

Bush Declares War On God
Washington, DC
September 2, 2005
Steve Gallop reporting
In a stunning turn of events, George W. Bush today spoke before a grieving nation to announce his plans to avenge the savage assault on New Orleans and the surrounding area. Bush vowed a three-pronged retaliatory strike. Looking shaken and withered he stammered in a monotone voice as he repeatedly sipped a clear liquid from what could be best described as a crystal chalice. He declared MISSION ACCOMPLISHED in phase one, which was the total annihilation of Hurricane Katrina, who is in fact nowhere to be found. Bush’s next phase involves cluster-bombing and partial drainage of the Atlantic Ocean to stop any future assaults on American holdings. As part of this phase, Bush also plans to implement a satellite-driven system of defensive missiles to fend off any unexpected ability of the evil terrorist, Mother Nature to recover from part one of phase two. And the most astonishing of all is phase three. Bush declared that he would do all the hard work necessary, at least between the hours of 9:00 am and 7:30 pm, and would not rest and would definitely not take any more five-week vacations, for at least a year, until the perpetrator of this evil deed was brought to justice. Bush declared the mother of all crusades to go after the one ultimately responsible for this devastating blow to such a God-fearing nation – he is going after God. As Bush’s tongue flapped wildly he managed to get out several coherent words. “Somebody’s gotta pay for this ruination of my vacation. Heh, heh, heh. I’m afraid that this new war is likely to go on even longer than the one I started over there in Oil Land, I mean Arabia over there. But, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do – even if it’s me and even if I have no idea what the hell I’m doin’. And think it’s pretty clear by now that I haven’t never even thought about the possibility of havin’ a idea. All I know is I I gave up drinkin’ so’s I could be born again as a man of faith. I worked hard, I worked hard to believe in the Lord and be a man with a with a good heart. It’s hard work. Nobody ever expected that God would attack our great nation like this. We have been tracking God’s actions for several months and our new-fangled intelligence tells us that God and his minions have been planning an attack like this for some time. I never woulda thought that that there memo sayin’ “God Plans Immense Flooding in Southeast US During 2005 Hurricane Season” meant there’d be a massive hurricane slammin’ into New Orleans at this time of year. I’m jes plumb fed up with God pushin’ us around like this and thinkin’ He can jus get away with it. This here country is gonna show that bearded so’n’so a thing or two or I ain’t from Texas. I mean, I’m beginnin’ to think that God was in on that 9/11 thing too. Why do they hate are freedom so much? Iffin I was a liberal I’d be sayin that God needs some serious therapy but I ain’t no liberal so I say let’s git ‘Im” Bush then shook his fist, or more accurately one of his fingers heavenward as he directed his simian grimaces toward the Intelligent Designer. Once he regained control of his limbs he grabbed up his chalice and abruptly emptied it – mostly into his gaping mouth. Throwing it to the floor he added, “There’s a saying here in America……..well it’s in Texas so I’m pretty sure y’all got it here in America too. Fool me once, shame on……….shame on you. Fool me-won’t git fooled agin.” He vowed to bring his Maker to justice dead’r alive, Texas style.
Coincidentally, just this morning Bob Novak uncovered documents from the early days of the Neo-Cons. Apparently, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and the other then-young lads, before their hey-day when they came up with the Project For A New American Century, had an earlier incarnation of that now famous and thriving treatise on American global dominance. The PNAC, of course states that America is the strongest nation on the planet and it’s time she flexed that muscle in case there is anyone out there who is not suitably impressed with our awesome and shocking might. Anyway, the earlier version called not merely for global dominance, but UNIVERSAL dominance on biblical proportions. This would seem to explain Bush’s constant babblings about missions to Mars.
According to the latest intelligence, God is believed to be hiding in a cave at this very moment, somewhere in the vicinity of Mesopotamia, reading the Torah with Jesus.
Steve resides in Pennsylvania and writes to amuse himself in the face of stupidity of biblical proportions.

Posted by: Steve | Sep 4 2005 1:07 utc | 14

I don’t sense the redevelopment conspiracy. Any captialist city needs a servant class. There by necessity will always always be poor areas of town.
Bush is fixated on Iraq. Calling up out-of-state NG and the military would be admitting that the war was hurting ‘homeland’ readiness. It was pure political defensiveness. And killed thousands.

Posted by: folkers | Sep 4 2005 1:13 utc | 16

Folkers, you obviously have never lived anywhere that’s become gentrified. Sooner or later, all the tradespeople have to move out, after they’ve built these wonderful mansions, because they can’t afford to live there anymore. You can find them in SoCal, like Manhattan Beach, Malibu, Newport, Montecito, Monterey, Orange, all used to be liveable working man’s towns, or at least you could live in the slum side of town, like North Ventura or Silver Beach.
The rich build enclaves at a city-planning scale that you could scarcely imagine. Literally whole square miles of compounds, avenues, boutique retail, promenades, hotels, class A offices.
The rich take over Bellevue, and the poor end up in Seattle. The rich take over Tiger Mountain, and the poor end up in Kent Valley.
I’m still not sure they’ll take over the black part of New Orleans, but with that much money floating around from reconstruction, and that much devastation of property and property records, and the end of the housing bubble and the stock market and the US economy, I’ve just got this thorn in the blanket that New Orleans is the next boomer capital.
Working people will hang on as long as they can, but the poor, especially black poor, will be swept away in the first wave. Those who took Bush’s Magic Bus to the AstroDoom probably will end up cleaning office buildings there, competing with the Hispanics Bush is trying to push out,
or at least paying lip service to those who do.
A month from now they’ll have spun this up into the greatest Reconstruction since the Civil War, and the New Orleans airport will be renamed the George W. Bush International Airport. You watch!

Posted by: Carmen Michaels | Sep 4 2005 1:39 utc | 18

The Voice of the White House is starting to sound more and more frighteningly credible – calling out Bushco as rascist opportunists who see NOLA as a real estate and reconstruction windfall.

Posted by: conchita | Sep 4 2005 3:14 utc | 20

A Neo Orleans of the Mind
http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/001671.html
I grew up in a MidWest city at the North end of New Orleans.
They even wrote a song about it. We used to ride the steam
trains downtown to Maxwell Street after the war, and mingle
with the newer immigrants in rougher neighborhoods, go
stand outside Sears Roebuck and watch sweating sidewalk
hawkers selling cheap knife sets and ladies gloves, or ride
the trolley-bus back uptown to the Riverview Amusement Park,
a perpetual urban carnival and home to all sorts of gypsies,
tramps, thieves, bearded ladies, alligator boys, two-faced men,
sailors on leave, and the best rollercoasters that ever existed.
That’s all been torn down and gentrified now, along with the
infamous South Side tenements, back when poor urban blacks
were kept in high-rise welfare housing. I remember going to
visit an uncle in Baltimore, and standing there with my mouth
agape at the rows of tenements with chain-link fencing up the
entire face of the buildings, little pikininnies and rough hoods
hanging, looking down at me, pointing, spitting and laughing.
That was a long, long time ago. Then came gentrification.
I remember watching on TV some politicians talking about
what a great thing this was going to be for the poor folks who
had lived their whole lives in the projects. Now *some of them*
would have brand new apartments on a fixed income low rent.
I rolled my eyes when I heard that, but everyone played along,
and rolled over, and now all those tenements are townhouses,
and in-fill, and trendy yuppie hot spots, and if there’s any ethnic
folks still living there, they must be yuppies themselves by now.
http://chicago.indymedia.org/newswire/display_any/38549/index.php
Then Viet Nam came and went, and I found myself being pushed
away from one city to the next, pushed out of Seattle by the yuppies,
pushed out of San Francisco and then San Jose by more yuppies,
we ended up in Oakland, then Compton, then Long Beach, always
looking for a starter home, a place we could afford to buy for cash.
Anything south of there, forget it. That was all Hope Ranch.
So when Bush talks of a shining city of the future, a Neo Orleans,
I remember that black women in WA DC, when the developer said
something like, You people are going to have to adjust to change,
and this wonderful women rose up and started in, ‘You people’?!
‘You people’?!! and pretty soon she had that developer backed up
against the door, and running with his pretty secretary for the car.
We all laughed, the last time I’ve laughed in over twenty years.
1984, Ronald Reagan came to power and the PC was invented.
All trickle down, and don’t piss on my back and tell me it’s raining,
high-yield junk government, turning poor people out on the street.
Everything that was, was swept away. We don’t even think about
it anymore. Most people blogging the Net grew up *after* 1984!
There’s almost no point in talking about it. If you were born after
WWII, and survived the 50′, 60’s, the 1970 oil crisis and so-called
recession, then watched in horror the 1980’s, the real estate and
silicon valley young turks, the booming prices and diminishing
opportunities, coke, disco, and then the second more hedonistic
1990’s, and the gargantuan internet stock swindle … if you had
lived through those decades and survived, as so many of your
friends had fallen, then 9/11 was just another day at the office.
And last week in New Orleans was just business as usual.
I really believe, and this is based on a life as much up as down,
(I’ve sipped Rothchild’s, and lived in abandoned warehouses),
that the reason they moved all those black folks to Houston and
not to Atlanta is simply DeLay has succeeded in redistricting
Texas so that no matter how many Democrats come drifting in,
he can deliver a Red vote. Those folks are all disenfranchised.
And I’d wager most of them are going to end up working up
in some processing plant in Arkansas for Tyson Foods, or in
some abandoned tar-paper shack in some cotton field against
the tide of hispanics, or forced into slums around oil refineries
and chemical plants … and they’ll never see New Orleans again.
I don’t know if forced busing was meant to aid and abet slavery,
but I’ll bet our new justice Roberts suddenly flip-flops about it.
I bet that you’ll hear all these high-and-mighty obfuscations
from politicians about national security and eminent domain
and getting government off the backs of the local developers.
And I’ll bet a whole lot of tax-payer’s money goes to prop up
insurance companies that were undercapitalized, and even
more tax-payer’s money gets sucked into regional planning,
and a giant whirlpool vacuum cleaner of Fed:State cronyism.
I hope I’m wrong. I just wish I didn’t remember everything.
I wish I could just get “attitude re-adjusted”, like a Martha
Stewart, just wake up every day and say, How am I going
to make some mad bank off of this whole terrible disaster.
I ga-ron-tee that a whole lot of carpetbaggers already are.

Posted by: tante aime | Sep 4 2005 3:18 utc | 22

Following up on jd’s report of how FEMA’s response in Fla was different in this non-election year, Billmon’s new post Where There’s a Will discusses this very issue, as does a new DKos diary FEMA Used to Help Bush Win Florida in 2004 by DHinMI.
The DKos fromt page is awash (if that’s an appropriate word to use right now) with stories about the series of Katarina relief Potemkin Villages they keep erecting for the Chimp:
Bush Visit Grounded Relief Helicopters
More BushCo Tragedy Fakery?
Bushco Fakes Levee Repairs for Photo-Op
Also, Chief Justice Rehnquist is dead.

Posted by: OkieByAccident | Sep 4 2005 3:45 utc | 24

Chief Justice Renquist has died this evening. There could be no worse time.

Posted by: Diogenes | Sep 4 2005 4:02 utc | 26

Bush has been hiring his political campaign sycophants for major positions in government and crossing his fingers that they never have to do anything but collect a paycheck. This should be a big political issue after this.

Posted by: steve expat | Sep 4 2005 4:07 utc | 28

thank you Tante Aime.
You gotta admit these gangstas are giving “forced busing” a whole new meaning!

Posted by: jj | Sep 4 2005 5:44 utc | 30