It seems strange to me that the White House is trying to defend itself by claiming that the President was actively engaged in the Katrina response, participating in numerous briefings, etc. Given the horrendously incompetent response to Katrina, isn't it true that the more engaged the President was in that response the more clearly responsible he is for its failure?

I  agree Purple State.  Like so much that this administration says and does, the handling, or non-handling of the Katrina tragedy is incomprehensible.

You know, I have some vague recollection of highlighting the photo or finding something out about this briefing.  But I don't remember the precise details. 

To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld... "We report the news with information we have, not information you'd like for us to have."

I think this video is going to be analogous to the Rodney King video.

Despite,clear and convincing evidence,on film...the folks in Simi Valley (GOP/right wing) will still refuse to acknowledge the lies and reality of the tape.

Matthews started the spin already with "Kerry was a flip-flopper"

The toddler with his hand caught in the cookie  jar mentality of the GOP when they are blatantly wrong,is just nauseating...."but, but, my sibling did this ma", is how they respond to every single violation of the law, policy or constitution.

Countless acts of 'blamegame' and pointing the finger to create distraction.  It is almost as if they never learned...two wrongs do not make a right ...instead they whine on and on and kvetch and belly moan ..about some other's transgression..like that transgression alters their own actions.  This is nothing more than Simi Valley all over again.

The republicans simply refuse to be accountable and the mindless GOP sheeple continue to follow them....

... not to mention conning the country into his disastrous war in Iraq.

Tom

Maybe I'm liberally-biased, but I really don't get the sense that Clinton's lie was a big F U to all of us. His lie was almost an "everyman lie." Not that I've ever cheated on my significant other, but many people do, and many people get caught. (Deep down, much of the backlash to Clinton was guilt, maybe?)

Bush's lies are not the "everyman" kind. We all don't directly or indirectly cause the death of thousands of people when we lie. We all don't get to say F U to the Constitution, like King George thinks he can.

But that's the message -- some lies are OK. Sex, bad. War? Torture? Needless death? Not so bad.

Dissent Protects Democracy

The breachings of the levees occurred Monday afternoon under tranquil weather conditions, thus catching many by surprise.

New Rule:

When you watch the President get a briefing on how the levees might break, you automatically don't get to use the phrase "catching many by surprise" anymore.

Dissent Protects Democracy

As the signs at the protest rallies say, "Bush Lied; People Died."

Tom

I agree that the media attaches far too much salience to videotape and is often unwilling to report stories-- or report them well-- where no videotape exists.

But I don't blame the media for this. This is the public's doing. It is no secret, for instance, that local newscasts with lots of "live" and/or video-based reporting do better in the ratings-- even if that "live" reporting consists of stand-ups at sites where whatever news that was made was made hours ago, inane car chases, and "America's Funniest Home Videos"-style vignettes. If an important story relies on investigation or actual reporting, it gets deemphasized because viewers want to connect with visual images and get bored when anchors or reporters are simply relating facts to them.

So, as a result, political scandals gain salience when they are connected to pieces of videotape, which are played over and over again. Think of the clip of Clinton saying "I did not have sexual relations with that woman". Rodney King isn't the only victim of police brutality in history, but he is probably the most famous, because his beating was videotaped and played over and over again. Or, recently, think of the efforts of Bush to try and purge photos of him and Jack Abramoff from the public record. A picture is worth a thousand words.

As long as the public wants everything to be shown to them on video before they deign to care about it, the media is going to cater to them. But that's not the media's fault-- that's the fault of an apathetic public that wants everything spoon fed to them.

I believe that for democracy to function, government officials must be held responsible for their actions/inactions.  This is the heart of accountability.  I have been infuriated since 9/11 (more or less) by the incompetence, corruption, and mendacity of this Adminstration.  I see no evidence of the Bush Administration being held responsible for what it has done (and hasn't done).  The question I have is:  why isn't this happening?

Here is another shot at pointing out today's story on the Hurricane, Lies and Videotape Scandal.

Seen first at firedoglake, where Jane points the way to the suddenly discovered, Congressionally sought transcript of the August 29 call between Bush, Brownie and Gov. Blanco. It sems a White House official helpfully emailed it to Newsweek yesterday.
This is the transcript that the WH could not produce for Congress because someone was not doing a heckofajob during the Aug.29 conversation and forgot to push the record button.
Now some people would like to see an Aug. 31 transcript, but

An administration official said the White House is withholding the Aug. 31 transcript in order to protect the confidentiality of communications between the president and his advisers.

Every day there are new surprises, yet no surprises in this administration.

Sorry to rain on your parade, but the levees broke earlier as the storm was passing. This was learned during the hearings when "Marty" (I think is his name) the only FEMA worker actually in New Orelans, emailed Brown. He was in a helicopter over the levees as it was happening that morning.

As far as the evacuation being ordered or not ordered: I have to say as a person who evacuates early and often (every time any storm comes) this one took me by surprise. Thursday I was out with a friend, she said it is supposed to go to the FL panhandle. I woke up and went to work. Friday afternoon NOAA had all the tracks going directly to NO. My co-worker printed it out for me. They were not yet reporting it on the local news.  My co-worker Dave is the ONLY reason I knew to go home and pack for a Saturday evacuation. (Like I said early and often) My mother lives an hour away and she does not have TV right now. I had to call her. She did not know about it. I called my friend who I saw the night before, she didn't know about it. Many were surprised to wake up Saturday to have a CAT 3 or 4 heading straight for them. Despite the fact that we were all caught off guard, 80% evacuated. Most that did not either, 1) made a conscious decision not to evacuate because they couldn't leave early enough to not wait in 15 hours of traffic (to get to Houston or Jackon) or 2) did not have a car or access to one. 

This hurricane changed its course very quickly and came our way. It takes a lot of resources being put in place to pull off an evacuation like this. Have you heard of contraflow. It is a little bit of a nightmare but we got almost 3/4 of a million people out with contraflow. It wasn't all rosy, but it worked and we learned.

As a person from Louisiana, a very poor state with an abundance of poor people I know it is hard to make this decision to evacuate. We are threatened every year, multiple times. Often with little or no damage. I evacuate because I have seen the documentaries of what these storms can do and so I would rather drive out of the "bowl" as I call it, the city of New Orleans. I think about 80% of the city agrees.

As for the incompetence of Blanco and Nagin. Again, this is a very poor state and a very poor city. The whole lynchpin of the "plan" was for the feds to arrive within 48 hours not 5 to 6 days. It didn't happen. We pay an assload of taxes only to be lied to. The buck stops with the president. He is the one in this whole picture who has unlimited resources. He is the one that says he will "protect" us. He is the one that we count on when everyone else doesn't have the means to help us. If this had been terrorist attack instead of a slow moving hurricane giving us 24 hours notice and people were not helped, would that have been the local officials fault too?

We cannot afford to have incompetent people in our government. FIRE THEM. Clean house, starting with the President himself. They Lied, people died, but this time it was not the volunteer soldiers dying it was the poor and the infirm. When you don't do your job, you get fired. The same goes for the President.

MsAnnaNOLA

New Orleans, Louisiana

It's not incomprehensible at all. A corrupt corporate news media helped place an ultra-corrupt government in power by heaping contempt and false accusations on Al Gore while relentlessly pushing GOP talking points like "It doesn't matter if Bush is dumb" and "People would rather have a beer with Bush". From day one they they bizzarely characterizing FEMA as an "entitlement" program, indicating their disdain for it.

Further, the timing for the Bush administration was just awful.  A vote on permanently repealing the billionaire-heir tax death tax was coming up in just a few days and if the government reponded to Katrina in a big, expensive way the public would wonder why we would want to underfund such a cool government just when it was spending so much money. So the president effectively responded to Katrina the same way that some young children respond to a living-room fire: By hiding in a closet. Bush and Rove seriously believed that if they gave Katrina the short shrift the whole thing would just blow over and they'd soon get their vote on the inheritance tax. They didn't even bother to call the Pentagon in order to get nearby Navy ships involved in a big way.  "I couldn't do much without an order from the president" said one ship captain.

Bottom line: The Bush tax giveaways, both past and future, distort all government policy. We can never have normal government functions so long as media-supported tax-cut zombies are in power.

MsAnnaNola

The way this thing played out is unfortunate and it's easy to see why blaming the Federal Government (George W. Bush) is an easy, clean, and efficient thing to do.  But just as many accuse Bush of using Michael Brown as a scapegoat, many more are doing the same thing to the Federal Government.  It is unfortunate that Louisiana (New Orleans in particular) is poor and full of poor people.  But that is not a reason to let Ray Nagin and Governor Blanco off the hook.  They are responsible for their cities and the first unit responders (who were virtually non-existent during the crisis).  Just like if you are at a bank that is robbed, you first expect the LOCAL authorities to arrive AND LATER the state police or FBI.  In the case of Katrina, there WERE NO FIRST RESPONDERS.  That is the fault of the local government alone.  FEMA typically arrives after a disaster and relieves the first unit responders.  This method was broken from the outset.

whiterosebuddy

Politicians putting their party above national interests?  Boy, I'm sure that's a first in world history.

When you watch the President get a briefing on how the levees might break, you automatically don't get to use the phrase "catching many by surprise" anymore.

I just read the transcript printed in the NYT.  It doesn't say anything about the levees breaking.  It talks about storm surge pushing water over the tops of the levees.  "Overtopping" means water gets trapped on the wrong side of an intact levee and can't drain.

August 28

One of the valleys here in Lake Pontchartrain, we've got on our forecast track, if it maintains its intensity: about 12 1/2 feet of storm surge in the lake. The big question is going to be: will that top some of the levies? And the current track and the forecast we have now suggests there will be minimal flooding in the city of New Orleans itself, but we're -- we've always said that the storm surge model is only accurate within 20 percent.

If that track were to deviate just a little bit to the west, it would -- it makes all the difference in the world. I do expect that there will be some of the levies over top even out here in the western portions where the airport is. We've got valleys that can't overtop some of the levies.

The problem we're going to have here -- remember, the winds go counterclockwise around the center of the hurricane. So if the really strong winds clip Lake Pontchartrain, that's going to pile some of that water from Lake Pontchartrain over on the south side of the lake. I don't think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levies will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very, very grave concern.

August 29

The rest of the track we have 10 to 15 feet, in a few areas up to 16 feet. At least glimpsed it out, and Louisiana can talk a little bit more about this than I can, but it looks like the Federal levies around the City of New Orleans will not have been (incomprehensible) any breaches to.

So please read.

Yeah, but in that case the purpose was to force the jury to define the precise moment(s) of abuse.  To stretch your analogy, the question this time around on a frame by frame analysis would be, "Is this engagement with the issue?"  A string of no answers won't let the defendant off in this case.

It wasn’t in the afternoon, more likely the early morning hours, while Katrina was still pounding the area.

From "Hurricane Katrina," Center For Cooperative Research:

Between 7:00 and 9:00 am August 29, 2005: National Public Radio Repeatedly Reports Breaches and Overtopping

National Public Radio's (NPR) Greg Allen reports, right after the storm passes over, that that people who did not evacuate are now reporting flooding, up to the ceilings of some houses. According to Allen, "[t]there have been reports that the levee has breached in one area," and the pumps have already failed. The flooding, however, is not yet widespread. [NPR Morning Edition (Audio), 8/29/2005] NPR will continue to report the breach and flooding throughout the day .

Between 7:00 am and 9:30 am August 29, 2005: Louisiana Governor: Water has Breached the Levee System; Eastern New Orleans is Flooding

Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, appearing on NBC, Today Show, reports that "I believe the water has breached the levee system, and is—is coming in. I mean, we've got water in so many areas there that, you know, none of that's a big surprise. It's just a big worry." (Blanco is likely referring to the Industrial Canal floodwall.) Officials are "hearing of flooding of six-to-eight-foot waters in eastern New Orleans near the parish line of Orleans and St. Bernard. Obviously, our low-lying areas are experiencing a lot of flooding as well." According to Blanco, the water is rising at about one foot per hour: "And yes, that gives us great concern. The area that we're talking about is a heavily populated area. We're hoping that it—that it was 100 percent evacuated. Eight-foot waters are—are very serious." Blanco warns that, "We have not seen the last of—of the damage. I expect that it will worsen throughout the day."

(7:15 am) August 29, 2005: New Orleans Mayor Tells NBC that Water is Overtopping New Orleans Levee System, Lower 9th Ward is Flooding

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin tells NBC's Today Show that his city is "still not out of the woods as it relates to that worst-case scenario." Already he has received reports that water is overtopping the levee systems, and in the Lower 9th Ward, a pumping station has filed. "So we will have some significant flooding, it's just a question of how much."

Katrina E-mails, as reported by CNN:

Monday morning, August 29, 2005:

At 9:36 a.m., a FEMA employee stationed at the National Hurricane Center e-mailed FEMA official Michael Lowder that a report had been received that a levee in Arabi, next to the Industrial Canal, had failed.

And at 10 a.m., a DHS official e-mailed DHS headquarters in Washington: "It is getting bad. Major flooding in some parts of the city. People are calling in for rescue saying they are trapped in attics, etc. That means water is 10 feet high there already."

A White House Homeland Security Council report at 11:13 a.m. takes note of the dire reports. It reads in part: "Flooding is significant throughout the region and a levee in New Orleans has reportedly been breached sending 6-8 feet of water throughout the 9th Ward area of the city."