I was young enough, I still believed in war

Craziest Katrina Blog Award: The Interdictor.

This blog is run by some guy who was once in the U.S. special forces and now runs a bunch of servers for his friend's computer company. As Katrina approaches he decides to stay behind in their New Orleans office and ride out the storm. This guy is armed with weapons, food, water, a model girlfriend, a few friends, some webcams, computers, and a diesel generator. With these few basic supplies he live blogs the events starting from the very first day that Katrina hits.

For the most riveting blogging that I have read in a while CLICK HERE and work your way through the storm day by day.

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For some more persepective on the storm/flood, check out this flood overlay map that shows the massive reach of the disaster when imposed on a number of other U.S. cities. Check out Washington D.C.. IF the storm hit our city, the flood would have engulfed you suckas in Downtown D.C., Alexandria, Arlington, Van Ness, Takoma Park, Suitland, Anacostia, and Shirlington. That should give you some idea of the massive scope of this disaster.

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Blagg's blog speaks the truth again. Why do so many fools wait in line for bars/clubs, I will never understand it.

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I still stand my my statement that anyone with a monster-truck sittin' on Dubs has forfeited their right to complaint about gas prices. But since McDonkerton continues to complaint, this picture shows that it could be worse. And if you are that obsessed with saving a couple dollars on gas, apple has some wacky program that lets you find the cheapest pumps.

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Now for my continuing/neverending rant on the worst ...president ....ever.

If you dont want to hear a long political rant about an incompetent administration, stop reading now.

First Bush goes on vacation, for FIVE WEEKS. During this marathon vacation, Katrina strikes and Bush decides to stay out West and play guitar with country singers and share cake with John McCain.

Despite the storm pummeling NO, Bush decides to continue with his propaganda tour on his prescirption drug plans, and during a speech briefly reminds everyone to pray for New Orleans and gives a short empty promise of federal aid.

Then after deciding that he should actually head to D.C. a day later, Bush first decides to fly back to Texas for a good nights sleep on the ranch.

In fact, Bush didn't even FLY OVER New Orleans until Wednesday afternoon, a full 60 hours AFTER the hurricane has destroyed the city.
At that point, instead of surveying the disaster he just peers out his window at the pour souls trapped below.

Then, by Thursday when Bush finally starts paying attention to the disaster he makes the single dumbest statement in this whole mess:

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Now this is actually a true statement unless you count every scientist, engineer, weather expert, city official or disaster expert, who reviewed the levees before the storm and concluded that the topping of the levees was likely, or the report from CNN that “Virtually everything that has happened in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina struck was predicted by experts and in computer models”

With that idiotic fucking comment out of the way our idiot-in-chief finally gets to Alabama FOUR DAYS after Katrina strikes, and he is bombarded with tons of questions regarding the lack of response by the Federal government.

The horrible federal response had been spearheaded by FEMA, and his personally appointed director Michael D. Brown who according to Time magazine and any other source "whose disaster credentials seemed to consist of once being the commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association?”

Now this clown who was let go from the Arabian Horse Association is leading an inept disaster effort and does not even realize that hundreds are trapped in the convention center in NO. Still Bush refuses to criticize the work of FEMA or Brown because all of FEMA’s top ranking officials were appointed -- not because of their disaster experience or government job performance -- but due to their work on the Bush/Cheney CAMPAIGN or in the Florida recount battle. Once, again these are friends and cronies, whose positions have nothing to do with their competency or experience in handling disasters, and it is their job to save a major US city.

At this point Bush makes the second stupidest statement in this whole mess

"Brownie you're doin a great job"

This is the same Brownie that the New Republic profiles as follows:

When Brown left the IAHA four years ago, he was, among other things, a failed former lawyer - a man with a 20-year-old degree from a semi-accredited law school who hadn't attempted to practice law in a serious way in nearly 15 years and who had just been forced out of his job in the wake of charges of impropriety. At this point in his life, returning to his long-abandoned legal career would have been very difficult in the competitive Colorado legal market. Yet, within months of leaving the IAHA, he was handed one of the top legal positions in the entire federal government: general counsel for a major federal agency. A year later, he was made its number-two official, and, a year after that, Bush appointed him director of FEMA.

According to the USA Today, Bush had been dismantling FEMA from the beginning of his presidency

“Over the past four years, the Bush administration has replaced competent leaders with people long on political connections but short on disaster management expertise. At the same time, the war on terrorism has drained the agency's resources and reduced its effectiveness.”

In addition to this fired horse trader/director the other leaders of FEMA were also Bush campaign workers with no disaster expereince who had merely helped on the campaign trail.

The [FEMA] Chief of Staff is a guy named Patrick Rhode. He planned events for President Bush's campaign. Rhode has no emergency management experience whatsoever.(...)
The [FEMA] Deputy Chief of Staff is Scott Morris. He was a press flak for Bush's presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush's campaign commercials. He also has no emergency management experience.

Conservative Andrew Sullivan opines:

In normal times, appointing this kind of unqualified political hack to an agency with direct responsibility for saving lives is reckless. After 9/11, it is an incomprehensible failure.

Ok so after the political hack and idiot-in-chief continue screwing things up for a few more days, Republican lawmakers are finally ready for a crackdown........on the victims??

There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.

Ive never heard such bullshit.

And when any of these criticims are raised to the President’s Press Secretary he recites Rove's talking points that we are merely playing the “blame game” but I will leave you with Bush’s own words from his inauguration:

Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience. And though it requires sacrifice, it brings a deeper fulfillment. We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments. And we find that children and community are the commitments that set us free.