Hurricane Katrina

An anonymous Republican candidate for Senate quoted in the Washington Post (who has since been identified as Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele). Makes you wonder how many other Republicans are feeling this way:

"We've lost our way, we've gone to the well and we drank the water, and we shouldn't have," he said of congressional Republicans. "You don't go to Congress to become the party that you've been fighting for 40 years." [...]

The source of the candidate's anger — and his anxiety — is the Iraq war, which he called "the single thread that is weaving through every issue," including high gas prices and the violence in Lebanon. "People want an honest assessment from the administration, and they want to hear the administration admit we thought this, and it didn't happen that way, and — guess what — it didn't work, so we're going to try a Plan B." He continued: "Let's call it what it is. We thought this was going to be a different kind of engagement." [...]

The response to Katrina was "a monumental failure," he continued. "We became so powerful in our ivory towers, in our gated communities. We forgot that there are poor people." [...]

He spoke of his party affiliation as though it were a congenital defect rather than a choice. "It's an impediment. It's a hurdle I have to overcome," he said. "I've got an 'R' here, a scarlet letter."

That left the candidate in a difficult spot. "For me to pretend I'm not a Republican would be a lie," he reasoned. But to run as a proud Republican? "That's going to be tough, it's going to be tough to do," he said. "If this race is about Republicans and Democrats, I lose."

NYTimes:

Governors of both parties said Sunday that Bush administration policies were stripping the National Guard of equipment and personnel needed to respond to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, forest fires and other emergencies.

Tens of thousands of National Guard members have been sent to Iraq, along with much of the equipment needed to deal with natural disasters and terrorist threats in the United States, the governors said here at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association. [...]

Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a Republican and chairman of the governors association, said: "The National Guard plays an incredibly valuable role in the states. What we are concerned about, as governors, is that when our troops are deployed for long periods of time, and their equipment goes with them but does not come back, the troops are very strained, and they no longer have the equipment they were trained to use."

Billmon has the scoop:

MR. McCLELLAN: I think at this point it's pretty clear to everybody that the amount of federal cash that will pour into Texas after Rita will dwarf the Katrina reconstruction tab — as well as the costs of World War II, the Apollo Project, the Reagan tax cuts and the entire federal budget for defense, Social Security and Medicare combined. I mean, that's just a given, considering how much clout Texas has in Congress and here at the White House.

The President is certainly open to offsetting those enormous costs with tiny, symbolic spending cuts in other parts of the budget, as long as they're carefully targeted at Democrat districts. But based on our economic projections, we're reasonably sure the Treasury can continue to borrow huge sums of money from foreigners for at least the next three or four years, and after that it will be somebody else's problem.

Q What about raising taxes?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that question. Paula?

Must be because of all the homosexuals!

(I can't wait to see what the Religious Right comes up with this time. I wonder if anyone's asked them why a natural disaster hasn't hit Massachusetts? or San Francisco? or the Netherlands? or Canada?)

A comprehensive five-part series from AlphaGeek at Daily Kos (Part 1):

Despite what you may have gathered from reading guides to readiness from the government, the Red Cross, or other organizations, you should not begin with a spending spree at the local hardware store. When you strip away all of the bureaucrat-speak, there are three basic steps you must follow to be ready for disaster:

1. Assess

2. Plan
3. Prepare ...

Each city, state, and region of the country has its own unique set of risks. ... Your first task in building a disaster-readiness plan is to assess the risks particular to the areas where you spend significant time. In America's car-centric suburban culture, many people work 20 miles or more from their home. The risks at work and at home may differ considerably, and should be assessed separately.

Knight Ridder reports that the military has been an approved resource for FEMA (except for law-enforcement activities) for years now:

Former FEMA Director James Lee Witt, who served under President Clinton, believes that the Bush administration is mistaken if it thinks there are impediments to using the military for non-policing help in a disaster.

"When we were there and FEMA was intact, the military was a resource to us," said Witt. "We pulled them in very quickly. I don't know what rule he (Bush) talked about. ... We used military assets a lot." ...

Read the rest of this entry...

I'm starting to feel sorry for the folks at The Daily Show and The Onion. How do you top stuff like this? Here's former FEMA chief Michael Brown's explanation for the slow federal response to Katrina (NYTimes):

Mr. Brown acknowledged that he had been criticized for not ordering a complete evacuation or calling in federal troops sooner. But he said the storm made it hard to communicate and assess the situation.

"Until you have been there," he said, "you don't realize it is the middle of a hurricane."