Okay, back from my afternoon appointments.
Walter asks
Quote:Could you please give those data, you asked me, for 'your' ABC-poll?
Nope. I just put the media polls up there like everybody else does usually without a clue of who made the calls, what questions were asked and in what order they were asked. They are interesting and sometimes even helpful in spotting trends, but in this case, I think they have too wide a margin of disagreement to be particularly useful.
You have the exact questions the pollsters asked and the order in which they were asked? Could you post them please?
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state's National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn't come from Washington until late Thursday.
About 26,000 New Orleans residents sought refuge from Hurricane Katrina at the Superdome, which authorities describe as the "shelter of last resort," Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu said late Sunday. To help keep them fed and hydrated, the Louisiana National Guard delivered three truckloads of water and seven truckloads of MREs
HUFFPO EMERGENCY BUSH BASH BLOG APPLICATION FOR THE VICTIMS OF ALL DISASTERS EVERYWHERE! (270 comments )
HELLO EVERYONE!!!
Do you often find yourself fantasizing about becoming a Huffpo blogger? Do you love to read other blogs, digest their info, and then expel pre-chewed nut-bag assumptions into a concerned and earnest post? If so, you might be perfect for this blog!
So... how do you get the job?
Just tick the boxes!
SECTION ONE: WHO ARE YOU?
Are you famous?
Do you know someone famous?
have you ever brushed up against someone famous?
Was it Warren Beatty?
Did you think he'd be firmer?
Is your husband famous?
(check one of the following)
- Yes I am Rebecca Pidgeon.
- Yes I am Laurie David
- Yes, I am Shiva Rose
- No, but my wife is rich AND famous, I am Brad Hall
- Other lady of leisure:____________________
Where did you spend your summer vacation?
- French Riviera
- Camp Casey
- Deepak Chopra's Seducing the Spirit Retreat
- working as Sean Penn's personal photographer
Which of the following countries have you threatened to move to (check all
that apply):
- France
- Canada
- Monaco has no taxes, right?
-Can you work the phrase "tipping point" into a sentence, without actually
reading the book, "The Tipping Point," or even understanding what this
tipping point thing is? Can you pretend to know something without knowing
anything?
Do you have a black and white picture of yourself, with your chin resting
comfortably on your fist? When you stare at this picture, do you get a
warm fuzzy feeling, not unlike urinating down your leg?
have you ever written any poetry?
-it doesn't rhyme, does it?
-are you a man?
-if so, when you tell people you're a poet, do they immediately realize they're going to have to pay for dinner?
Have you ever claimed that you are a fiscal Republican?
Just so you can spout lefty crap at parties?
You still go home alone, don't you?
Do you own a Che Guevara sweatshirt?
Did you wear it to a Dave Matthews concert last year?
Did you get beaten up by a group of pissed-off Cubans?
SECTION 2: DISASTER THINKING
-Do you believe that no one can voice support of the IRAQ war UNLESS they are willing to serve in it?
-YET when it came to the flood, you readily assumed an expertise in crisis management within hours of the disaster?
-And only so you could heave blame at Bush like a monkey flinging his own feces?
Do you always try to relate large-scale tragedies to your own life?
-Do you say things like, "Wow, I was just in New Orleans."
-"I had a connecting flight there."
-"I bought some beads in terminal 2."
-"I rented the Big Easy once. It was good."
-do you see "looting" as a function of poverty?
- brought on by Bush's policies?
-do you think you and a looter might get along over a beer?
-as you both agree over the point you just made about poverty?
-do you press charges after he stabs you?
Do you assume all poor people loot when faced with crisis?
-Even though most, if not all, poor people hate looters?
-Even though most, if not all, poor people HATE YOU MORE- for excusing looters?
do you really believe Bush doesn't care about poor, black people?
-But, then, who really seemed to RELISH the tragedy more?
-Bush?
-or The Huffington Post?
-When was the last time you used the word 'deconstruction?'
-Did it feel good?
-How will post-modernism help those in need right now on the Gulf Coast?
-Don't you think hicks who can do construction are more valuable to society than you?
-Does this shocking juxtaposition explain everything at the HuffPo?
Randall Robinson says people were eating corpses in New Orleans.
-is this an example of what Bush calls "soft bigotry of lowered expectations?"
-Do you think Randall's desire to demonize Bush exposed his own delusional fantasies?
-Do you think Randall's pants were on when he wrote that fantasy?
(NOTE:We are not implying that cannibalism is bad. Here at the Huffpo, we love ancient, spiritual cultures. And you can't get much more ancient or spiritual than the Anasazi tribe, and they used cannibalism in religious ceremonies as a method to get followers to pay tribute and build monuments. What these folks were doing was a religious, healing process. In a pot.)
Do you believe people are too afraid to discuss the "taboo" of race?
Yet you can discuss it for hours, insert it into any topic, from natural disasters to footwear?
Do you feel compelled to let blacks know immediately where you stand on the topic of race?
Do you feel compelled to tell blacks how much you admire Spike Jonze?
Do you realize the next day that you meant Spike Lee?
Is there anything racist about the fact that Oprah Winfrey talks black to black people, and then talks differently to white people?
-And what's up with Steadman, anyway?
-He's really taking care of himself!
SECTION THREE: YOUR BELIEFS!
When a crime is committed, do you blame the criminal?
Or do you find a root cause?
Do you try to find a root cause for everything?
How about when your girlfriend dumped you?
What do you think her root cause was?
Was it your obsession with root causes?
or just your small root?
A man wants to date his sister. Does this offend you?
-yes, it does. I'm fairly tolerant of many things, but not incest.
-No, not at all. Centuries from now we'll look back at this time with embarrassment - a time when we thought incest was "wrong." Healthy examples of this lifestyle abound: certain hill-tribes in Cambodia let siblings have sex, and the Indian Kukis are pretty much up for anything! And lets face it: Screwing your sibling guarantees a sex partner who knows you better than anyone. PLUS: NO PROM-NIGHT WORRIES ABOUT MEETING HER FATHER.
WARNING! Does any of this information, so far, cause your brain to absolutely disconnect and move on to another task? Quick: eat a banana or something!
MOVING ON:
If you had to kill one of the following, which would it be:
- your unborn baby
- a puppy or kitten
- a republican
- your assistant
- your Pilates instructor
- your private jet pilot (who has signed a non-disclosure agreement not to
divulge you have a private jet)
do you think peace is a "process?"
do you think war is evil, no matter what?
do you think you'd have to be stupid to be in the military?
Do you think white soldiers are rednecks?
- and black soldiers are victims of limited opportunity brought on by a racist society?
Do you like to tell people you're a pacifist?
-and that you'd never fight under any circumstance?
-Mind if I stop by your house and take your plasma?
(TV and blood platelets)
Do you like conspiracies?
Does reading about them make you feel smart?
Does obvious truth make you uncomfortable?
When a conspiracy is exposed as a lie, do you think that's part of THE conspiracy?
Do you think people can read your thoughts?
Are you receiving radio transmissions from your dental fillings?
Are they telling you that you're Norman Mailer?
Are they correct?
Do you believe in "shadow" governments?
Can you do "shadow" puppets?
-Do you think conservatives are stiff, humorless and mean?
-have you ever sat through a Tim Robbins play?
-Do you hate authority?
-until you need a cop?
-do you try to have an opinion, even when you really have none?
-do you think googling replaces thinking?
-do you favor high drama over slow progress?
-do you like it when authority figures are "shown up?"
-do you cry for authority figures when you're "helpless?"
-have you ever self-published a book?
-out of your garage?
-are they blocking the dryer?
-do you understand the motivations and feelings of animals?
-because you own a dog?
-do you like to put hats on the dog?
-and take pictures of dog with hat on his head?
HUFFPO QUICK QUIZ!: Could you have predicted that the cause of a lifetime - making Cindy Sheehan the sympathetic icon of our times - could be so easily dropped once we found better dead bodies than Casey to use against the President?
NOW LET'S CONTINUE!
-Do you like to tell people how close you lived to ground zero?
-Even though you live in Florida?
Do you run a progressive "group" blog?
But it's just you, isn't it?
Do you post comments at www.davidcorn.com?
And hope david might respond?
When he doesn't, are you sad?
-Later, do you repeatedly stab the collage of pictures you made of him?
Are you on any advisory boards?
Do you "spearhead" things?
Are you on any advisory boards to "spearhead" things?
Have you ever co-chaired a task force?
Are you a founding member, a president, senior counsel, a visiting fellow, a lecturer and an author of 14 books?
Have you been a memorial lecturer, or earned a honorary degree?
Have you done all this without ever holding an actual job?
Are you devoted to stopping global warming?
Enough to start a "virtual march" ?
Which means you can stay in your mansion that burns ungodly sums of fuel?
Do you believe we live in a toxic world?
Do you see poisons lurking everywhere?
Are you into detoxification?
Do you purify yourself?
Do you own an enema kit?
Does it have a travel case?
Is this travel case monogrammed?
-do you wear a baseball cap when you go to REM concerts?
-does it hide your bald spot?
-do you write for numerous alternative newsweeklies?
-Do you ignore the fact that they survive off escort ads?
-Which you swear you're never calling again.
Do you think we should all think globally?
Are you still living at home?
Are you an artist, author, performer and a visiting professor?
But basically you're famous for covering your genitals in syrup?
And nothing else.
Are you a children's advocate?
Do you have any kids of your own?
AND WHERE THE HELL IS ROSA?
(If she's late again, it's back across the river for her)
Are you a "meditation counsellor?"
Can you speak on spirituality and relationships?
But only for money?
Do you believe we all have souls?
What happened to yours?
Weren't you once Gary Hart?
Are you currently alive?
Do you still tell people you were once married to Jane Fonda?
Do people still care?
Do you consider yourself a "watchdog?"
Do you say you work "for the people?"
Do you think of yourself as a "conscience" for America?
Do you wonder why "No one listens to you anymore?"
Are you a consumer advocate for nonprofit, nonpartisan foundation?
Are you glad knit ties are back in fashion?
-Are you a frequent guest on talk shows?
-would you like to be?
-Do you practice crossing your legs when you're alone?
Do you serve on numerous governing boards, including: Rainforest Action Network, WITNESS, Bioneers, the New Apollo Project and the Social Venture Network?
-Do you do it for the free coffee mugs?
Is everything you work on "non-partisan?"
Are you dedicated to ensuring accountability in the executive branch of the federal government?
Until a Democrat gets into office?
Are you still owed money by Air America?
Is Al Franken not returning your calls?
Have you ever written a "one-woman" show?
and you're a man?
Are you into the "spoken word?"
But prefer to tell people you are a "multi-media artist?"
are these words meant to explain to mom and dad why there are only five other people in the audience?
Do you own ferrets?
Did you name them Noam and Chomsky?
Do you have dreadlocks?
And you're white?
Do you have a henna tattoo, a charity band around your wrist, and an eyebrow ring?
Do you celebrate "individuality" above all?
And you're pushing 40?
Did you ever host a show on PBS?
and NPR?
Have you ever worked on anything that turned a profit?
Are you into global justice?
Have you tried to unionise sweatshop workers in China?
Have you helped organize sex workers in Bangkok?
and you actually got three back to your hotel room for sixty bucks?
Did you ever work for a bi-annual feminist journal?
WHY?
Are you a Huffington Post commenter?
Have you seen how thin some of the bios are?
Have you ever wondered what you did wrong that you haven't been invited to blog?
Are you chomping at the bit to come after me -- again?
All right... go!
September 9, 2005
Advance Men in Charge
The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced this week that it didn't want the news media taking photographs of the dead in New Orleans. A FEMA spokeswoman talked unconvincingly about the dignity of the dead. But the bizarre demand, a creepy echo of the ban on news media coverage of the coffins returning from Iraq, is simply the latest spasm of a gutted federal agency.
It's not really all that surprising that the officials who run FEMA are stressing that all-important emergency response function: the public relations campaign. As it turns out, that's all they really have experience at doing.
Michael Brown was made the director after he was asked to resign from the International Arabian Horse Association, and the other top officials at FEMA don't exactly have impressive résumés in emergency management either. The Chicago Tribune reported on Wednesday that neither the acting deputy director, Patrick Rhode, nor the acting deputy chief of staff, Brooks Altshuler, came to FEMA with any previous experience in disaster management. Ditto for Scott Morris, the third in command until May.
Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House's Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience - and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy. Mr. Morris was a press handler with the Bush presidential campaign. Previously, he worked for the company that produced Bush campaign commercials.
So when Mr. Brown finally got around to asking Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff for extra people for Katrina, it wasn't much of a departure for Mr. Brown to say that one of the things he wanted them to do was to "convey a positive image of disaster operations to government officials, community organizations and the general public." We'd like them to stay focused on conveying food, water and medical help to victims.
Political patronage has always been a hallmark of Washington life. But President Bill Clinton appointed political pals at FEMA who actually knew something about disaster management. The former FEMA director James Lee Witt, whose tenure is widely considered a major success, was a friend of Mr. Clinton's when he took office in 1993, but he had run the Arkansas Office of Emergency Services. His top staff came from regional FEMA offices.
Surely there are loyal Republicans among the 50 directors of state emergency services. But President Bush chose to make FEMA a dumping ground for unqualified cronies - a sure sign that he wanted to hasten the degradation of an agency that conservative Republicans have long considered an evil of big government. Katrina has proved that federal disaster help is vital, and that Mr. Brown and his team of advance men can't do the job. What America needs are federal disaster relief people who actually know something about disaster relief.
Who Calls the Cavalry?
The Pentagon was prepared for Hurricane Katrina.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, September 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT
"When you fly over the Gulf, it looks like a WMD exploded," Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul McHale told me this week. "Katrina very nearly approached the operational requirements of a WMD event; this was the first test of the high-end capability envisioned by the strategy."
The "strategy" is a three-month-old document called "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support." It describes the Defense Department's plans to defend the U.S. from a WMD attack or deal with the rubble and mass casualties of such an attack. Traditionally DoD has always helped civil authorities contend with the ruin of natural disasters. That Katrina's massive scale mirrored a WMD attack, obliterating a city, is a coincidence. But it raises the question of whether the states, or relatively vulnerable states like Louisiana, are up to the job of being "first responders" to a WMD attack or its natural equivalent. If they are not, we need to change some laws.
The popular impression left the past week-- that the government was wholly unprepared for Katrina--is not true. Significant U.S. military assistance was on alert throughout the week prior to Katrina's landfall. Why those highly trained and drilled assets did not move into New Orleans sooner is a question that should now sit at the center of a debate over who should have the authority--the states or the federal government--to be the "first mover."
According to accounts provided by several sources involved with preparations for Katrina, the Pentagon began tracking the storm when it was still just a number in the ocean on Aug. 23, some five days before landfall in Buras, La. As the storm approached, senior Pentagon officials told staff to conduct an inventory of resources available should it grow into a severe hurricane. Their template for these plans was the assistance DoD provided Florida last year for its four hurricanes.
And a week earlier than this, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld issued an executive order delegating hurricane decision authority to the head of the Northern Command, Adm. Timothy J. Keating. Four days later, as the tropical storm soon to be named Katrina gathered force, Adm. Keating acted on that order.
Before the hurricane arrived in New Orleans, Adm. Keating approved the use of the bases in Meridien, Miss., and Barksdale, La., to position emergency meals and some medical equipment; eventually the number of emergency-use bases grew to six. And before landfall, Adm. Keating sent military officers to Mississippi and Louisiana to set up traditional coordination with their counterparts from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As well, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered the movement of ships into the Gulf.
By the Pentagon's account, it carried out these preparations without any formal Katrina-related request from FEMA or other authorities. The personnel behind the massive military effort now on display in Louisiana--airlift evacuation, medical, supply, and the National Guard--was on alert a week before the hurricane. According to Assistant Secretary McHale, "The U.S. military has never deployed a larger, better-resourced civil support capability so rapidly in the history of our country."
So where were they on the two days of globally televised horror? Why, for instance, didn't DoD fly all this help close to New Orleans as soon as it saw Katrina coming? The answer, in military argot, is that you don't deploy troops beneath a bombing run; Katrina predictably would have wiped out any help put in her uncertain path, just as she rolled over the Big Easy's wholly unprotected "first responders."
Then there's American history, tradition and law. Once disaster arrives, several federal laws designed to protect state sovereignty from being swept aside by a Latin-American-style national police force dictate that a state's officials, specifically the governor, is supposed to phone the federal government and describe what they need. If asked by Homeland Security, DoD will send in the cavalry. But this is one audible at the line even Don Rumsfeld doesn't get to call.
Post-mortem investigations will surely re-create, minute by minute, how Louisiana Gov. Blanco and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff idled away their time last week. But it appears now that Gov. Blanco did not make that crucial, early, legally mandated call to the President. Absent that, Fox and CNN became the call to the White House. The media message was "do something!" In fact, the president does have "do something" authority. It's called the Insurrection Act, which is what John Kennedy used in 1963 against Gov. George Wallace, ordering the governor's own National Guard to turn against him and forcibly integrate the University of Alabama. As to the looters, who were breaking no evident federal law, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 explicitly forbids using the military (unless a governor uses her National Guard under "state status") in a domestic police function.
The question raised by the Katrina fiasco--and by the Pentagon's new Homeland Defense Strategy to protect against WMD attack--is whether the threat from madmen and nature is now sufficiently huge in its potential horror and unacceptable loss that we should modify existing jurisdictional authority to give the Pentagon functional first-responder status. Should we repeal or modify the Posse Comitatus Act so homicidal thugs have more to fear than the Keystone Kops? Should a governor be able to phone the Defense Secretary direct, creating a kind of "yellow-light authority" and cutting out the Homeland Security or FEMA middleman? Should presidential initiative extend beyond the Insurrection Act?
Instinct says the answer is forever no. Survival suggests we had better talk about it.
September 9, 2005
Point Those Fingers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
To understand the history of the Bush administration's response to disaster, just follow the catchphrases.
First, look at 2001 Congressional testimony by Joseph Allbaugh, President Bush's first pick to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA, he said, would emphasize "Responsibility and Accountability" (capital letters and boldface in the original statement). He repeated the phrase several times.
What Mr. Allbaugh seems to have meant was that state and local government officials shouldn't count on FEMA to bail them out if they didn't prepare adequately for disasters. They should accept responsibility for protecting their constituents, and be held accountable if they don't.
But those were rules for the little people. Now that the Bush administration has botched its own response to disaster, we're not supposed to play the "blame game." Scott McClellan used that phrase 15 times over the course of just two White House press briefings.
It might make sense to hold off on the criticism if this were the first big disaster on Mr. Bush's watch, or if the chain of mistakes in handling Hurricane Katrina were out of character. But even with the most generous possible assessment, this is the administration's second big policy disaster, after Iraq. And the chain of mistakes was perfectly in character - there are striking parallels between the errors the administration made in Iraq and the errors it made last week.
In Iraq, the administration displayed a combination of paralysis and denial after the fall of Baghdad, as uncontrolled looting destroyed much of Iraq's infrastructure.
The same deer-in-the-headlights immobility prevailed as Katrina approached and struck the Gulf Coast. The storm gave plenty of warning. By the afternoon of Monday, Aug. 29, the flooding of New Orleans was well under way - city officials publicly confirmed a breach in the 17th Street Canal at 2 p.m. Yet on Tuesday federal officials were still playing down the problem, and large-scale federal aid didn't arrive until last Friday.
In Iraq the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran the country during the crucial first year after Saddam's fall - the period when an effective government might have forestalled the nascent insurgency - was staffed on the basis of ideological correctness and personal connections rather than qualifications. At one point Ari Fleischer's brother was in charge of private-sector development.
The administration followed the same principles in staffing FEMA. The agency had become a highly professional organization during the Clinton years, but under Mr. Bush it reverted to its former status as a "turkey farm," a source of patronage jobs.
As Bloomberg News puts it, the agency's "upper ranks are mostly staffed with people who share two traits: loyalty to President George W. Bush and little or no background in emergency management." By now everyone knows FEMA's current head went from overseeing horse shows to overseeing the nation's response to disaster, with no obvious qualifications other than the fact that he was Mr. Allbaugh's college roommate.
All that's missing from the Katrina story is an expensive reconstruction effort, with lucrative deals for politically connected companies, that fails to deliver essential services. But give it time - they're working on that, too.
Why did the administration make the same mistakes twice? Because it paid no political price the first time.
Can the administration escape accountability again? Some of the tactics it has used to obscure its failure in Iraq won't be available this time. The reality of the catastrophe was right there on our TV's, although FEMA is now trying to prevent the media from showing pictures of the dead. And people who ask hard questions can't be accused of undermining the troops.
But the other factors that allowed the administration to evade responsibility for the mess in Iraq are still in place. The media will be tempted to revert to he-said-she-said stories rather than damning factual accounts. The effort to shift blame to state and local officials is under way. Smear campaigns against critics will start soon, if they haven't already. And raw political power will be used to block any independent investigation.
Will this be enough to let the administration get away with another failure? Let's hope not: if the administration isn't held accountable for what just happened, it will keep repeating its mistakes. Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff will receive presidential medals, and the next disaster will be even worse.
This is SO much fun. Adversarial discourse. Way, way better than thinking or analysis. Clearly the way to sort out what is true and good. Do you consider, by the way tico, that when you are up before those gates of pearl that you'll have a solicitor provided?
Bushism of the Day
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Friday, Sept. 9, 2005, at 7:37 AM PT
Poplarville, Miss., Sept. 5, 2005
'Miserable failure' links to Bush
George W Bush has been Google bombed.
Web users entering the words "miserable failure" into the popular search engine are directed to the biography of the president on the White House website.
The trick is possible because Google searches more than just the contents of web pages - it also counts how often a site is linked to, and with what words.
Thus, members of an online community can affect the results of Google searches - called "Google bombing" - by linking their sites to a chosen one.
Weblogger Adam Mathes is credited with inventing the practice in 2001, when he used it to link the phrase "talentless hack" to a friend's website.
The search engine can be manipulated by a fairly small group of users, one report suggested.
The Bush administration has been on the receiving end of pointed Google bombs before.
In the run-up to the Iraq war, internet users manipulated Google so the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" led to a joke page saying "These Weapons of Mass Destruction cannot be displayed."
The site suggests "clicking the regime change button", or "If you are George Bush and typed the country's name in the address bar, make sure that it is spelled correctly (IRAQ)".
But Bush is a president*, and Moore only makes comments, and films.
*of sorts
McTag wrote:But Bush is a president*, and Moore only makes comments, and films.
*of sorts
You forgot to put the asterisk after the word "films."
