by Last Night in Little Rock

Showing that his four heart attacked golden heart is in the right place, VP Dick Cheney was not totally hiding during Katrina. He directed that power be restored to a pipeline pumping station in Southern Mississippi, at the expense of restoring power to a rural hospital first. The repair crews were diverted.

by Last Night in Little Rock

James Lee Witt, former FEMA director and current Louisiana recovery director and director of his own disaster recovery firm, said in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that he opposes President Bush's plan to militarize parts of FEMA's mission:

by Last Night in Little Rock

The lights came on in the New Orleans warehouse district, near Jackson square, on Thursday night, and the people rejoiced. Their City was coming back to life.

But, when the President's speech was over, somebody was told to pull the plug. Brian Williams reports for NBC's Nightly News:

by Last Night in Little Rock

Anderson Cooper 360 on CNN tonight was a wealth of information tonight, and the transcript is here. Not to slight all the other stories, including a great shouting match between Kenner city officials on tape accusing each other of incompetence and racism, the main story to me was the FEMA employee union president accusing those in charge of ignoring their own dire warnings and botching the relief efforts while the rank and file felt helpless:

by Last Night in Little Rock

The Saturday NY Times has an article, on its website late Friday night, that the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency still cannot get it right: FEMA, Slow to the Rescue, Now Stumbles in Aid Effort.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The weapons of mass destruction have been found, and they were right under our noses all the time:

George W. Bush and each member of his mal-administration, the Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency, and the Congress that passed Bush's budget that gutted the NOLA levee project in favor of pork barrel spending, tax cuts for the rich that gutted the economy, and the War in Iraq.

by TChris

Daily Kos has a story that's sure to get your dander up. After the administration spread its dual talking point strategy -- blame state and local governments for the failure to protect the poor from Hurricane Katrina, all the while decrying the "blame game" -- the Justice Department started looking for evidence that would allow the administration to blame environmentalists.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times reports today that G.O.P. Split Over Big Plans for Storm Spending. I wrote here that the federal government had a moral obligation to pay for the damage and reconstruction.

Suddenly, the big spenders become misers.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The New York Times quotes NOLA Mayor Nagin as saying that parts of New Orleans will be open this weekend, "with the French Quarter fully open for business a week from Monday."

I'm making plans to be there for the opening, if not sooner because parts of the French Quarter are already open, assuming I can clear my calendar. It is for next week, but that may be too soon.

My wife says it's because I'm apparently drawn to disasters. We were at Ground Zero two weeks later in 2001. The stench of death hung over lower Manhattan, but the City had regained most of its spirit by then, but there was a sense of everybody being subdued.

by Last Night in Little Rock

CNN just reported on air that tonight's speech in NOLA by the President would be a "defining moment" for his presidency. Wrong.

His defining moment, to me, was when he stupidly said "nobody thought the levee would break" when the NOLA doomsday scenario was on everybody's mind who ever had a sentient thought about the fact a hurricane could destroy NOLA. Key words: "sentient thought."

by TChris

The commander of the Army Corps of Engineers acknowledged today that the Corps followed its usual procedures when it prepositioned resources in the New Orleans area before Hurricane Katrina, knowing that those procedures would be inadequate to protect against a category 4 or 5 storm. Lt. Gen. Carl Strock admitted that the Corps should have prepositioned more helicopters and sandbags.

As his poll numbers continue to plummet, President Bush will acknowledge today that poverty and inequality are long-standing problems in the country he governs. Unfortunately, he isn't likely to admit that he exacerbated the problem by insisting on tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest members of society.

by TChris

Mike Brown predictably blames Gov. Blanco and not President Bush for the way things went “to hell in a handbasket” in Louisiana. But Brownie revealed in an interview that he spent the week calling the president’s top aides to report that “local authorities were overwhelmed and that the overall response was going badly.” His account confirms an obvious conclusion: the president should have set aside his guitar and tackled the problem at its inception.

This isn’t a tune the White House wants to play.

A senior administration official said Wednesday night that White House officials recalled the conversations with Mr. Brown but did not believe they had the urgency or desperation he described in the interview.

Brownie’s attempt to play the blame game is contradicted by Louisiana officials: