Forget everything you've heard about the 45,000 people who die in the U.S. each year because of no insurance (for some perspective, remember that that is 15 times the number of people who died on 9/11, 10 times the number of allied soldiers killed in Iraq and 5 1/2 times the number of Americans killed from Hurricane Katrina. Every year.). Forget about the millions of un- and under-insured Americans in the richest Western nation on the planet. Forget about the highest per capita medical costs and among the worst outcomes of the industrialized nations. Forget about being dropped for pre-existing conditions, like pregnancy or acne as a teenager.

None of that matters. Those Hollywood elites, like Will Ferrell, remind us who the true victims of health care reform are: the health insurance companies. Who will protect them?

Oh, that's right, the Blue Dogs will. It's sad when such an obvious example of parody and illogic actually accurately reflects the thinking of our elected representatives.

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Here's one for the memory banks from Bill Moyers Journal, September 2008, talking about the rise of hate talk on right wing radio, and Glenn Beck saying he'd like to kill Michael Moore along with some other right wing screechers doing their best to incite violence in the name of keeping their ratings up.

RICK KARR: Michael Savage isn't the only right-wing talk-radio host who launches blistering, even violent, verbal attacks on people and groups he doesn't like. Glenn Beck, for instance, fantasized about murdering a liberal filmmaker.

GLENN BECK: "I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out of him. Is this wrong?"

RICK KARR: Michael Reagan, son of the former president, suggested that people who claim that "nine-eleven was an inside job," a U.S. government conspiracy, deserve to die.

MICHAEL REAGAN: "Take them out and shoot them. They are traitors to this country, and shoot them. But anybody who would do that doesn't deserve to live. You shoot them. You call them traitors, that's what they are, and you shoot them dead. I'll pay for the bullet."

RICK KARR: Neal Boortz went after victims of Hurricane Katrina.

NEAL BOORTZ:"That wasn't the cries of the downtrodden. That's the cries of the useless, the worthless. New Orleans was a welfare city, a city of parasites, a city of people who could not, and had no desire to fend for themselves. You have a hurricane descending on them and they sit on their fat asses and wait for somebody else to come rescue them."

RICK KARR: Muslims are some of Boortz's favorite targets.

NEAL BOORTZ:"It's Ramadan and Muslims in your workplace might be offended if they see you eating at your desk. Why? I guess it's because Muslims don't eat during the day during Ramadan. They fast during the day and eat at night. Sorta like cockroaches."

RICK KARR: Reverend Chris Buice says he's heard that kind of language before.

REVEREND CHRIS BUICE: If you look at the history of like situations like in Rwanda in 1994, the talk radio was a big part of leading to the conditions that created a genocide. The Hutu radio disc jockeys would call the Tutsi cockroaches. There's the sense that these aren't human beings. You know, they're not human beings with children or grandchildren. These are cockroaches. And when you hear in talk radio that liberals are evil, that they are traitors, that they are godless, that they are on the side of the terrorist. That's hate language. You don't negotiate with evil people. You don't live in community with people you consider to be traitors.

RICK KARR: Millions of Americans tune in to right-wing talk radio every day. Rory O'Connor is a media critic and a liberal himself who's written a book on shock-talkers. He says not all of these broadcasters use violent language. But they do all share a predilection for outrage and, he says, they're all practically addicted to constantly cranking up that outrage.

RORY O'CONNOR: Here's the real problem. When you shock somebody, if you come back the next time and you apply the same stimulus, it's not shocking any longer. It's already happened. So you have to ratchet it up a little bit. So how do you cut through? How do you really shock? I think that in order to continue to outrage, you have to constantly be jacking up the pressure. And ultimately, there's gonna be some deranged person out there in that audience who's gonna say, "You know what? That's a good idea. Let me act on that."

GLENN BECK:"The fusion of entertainment and enlightenment."

RICK KARR: Entertainers — that's what a lot of the shock-talkers call themselves. O'Connor says, maybe. But their words can motivate their listeners to act.

RORY O'CONNOR: Now first and foremost, we have to recognize that many of them are employed across multiple platforms. So they may say something on their radio show, but they may repeat it on their television show. They may then repeat it in their newspaper column. They may repackage the ideas into their best-selling books.

Keith Olbermann said he was looking for everything anyone can find on Glenn Beck. Maybe this one makes the list on his show this week.

Last Thursday night I went to the Grammy Museum with Digby and Howie Klein to see the great Terence Blanchard do a Q&A and then play a short concert. It's an incredible venue to see a live event because the sound system is so sweet and with only 200 seats, it's a very intimate setting. I'm a member of NARAS and they often email events they have there but this is the first one I attended. Blanchard just released a new record called "Choices," and he was doing some promotion on his new amazing disc. He plays a magnificent trumpet and was accompanied by bass, piano, drums and a dynamic tenor sax. the record is unique too because it features the spoken words of Dr. Cornell West and he was a major inspiration to Blanchard's latest project.

West, who is a distinguished professor at Princeton, is best known for work that fuses civil rights and anti-war activism with a powerful moral and even religious social critique. Long a hero of progressives, he got into a much-publicized fracas with obtuse corporate shill Lawrence Summers, then serving, inexplicably, as president of Harvard. Asked about his collaboration with Blanchard, West defined Choices as being about "what kind of human being you’re going to be. How are you going to opt for a life of decency and compassion and service and love. What goes into that kind of choice. That’s the human challenge. To be part of this album is an unadulterated joy because no doubt about it, music for me is continuous of life-- to be able to live the kind of life that I live on the certain kind of Socratic calling of raising
unsettling questions. To be able to be in conversation and on an album with Terence Blanchard, that’s serious business... I mean, that’s... that’s a beautiful thing.”

You may know Blanchard's music because he has composed many music scores for Spike Lee including the haunting soundtrack of "When the Levees Broke," which documents the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. The event changed his life and he said something so simple yet so profound. "I didn't choose to be an activist, it chose me."

During Q&A sessions, I usually get bored and start daydreaming until the artist starts playing music, but I was riveted to each answer he gave. Terence is an educator who is the Artistic Director of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz in New Orleans and he answered each question decisively, majestically and honestly. He understands how important it is for an artist to imitate the greats of Jazz, but then develop a personal voice which might be the most difficult taks of all. In his early days, he broke in with Art Blakey and when he tried to play like Miles on "My Funny Valentine," Terence said that Blakey yelled at him. "Miles never played the melody. Play the damn melody." I laughed because Art was famous for that, but was also responsible for adding new voices to his band. He launched many careers in his time and when I used to see Art play in college, the talk was always, "Who's in his band now?"

Blanchard's voice floated through the hall like the mellow tone of a flugelhorn, but with a richness of sound that was magnetic. His passion for music reeled me in and never let me go. I related to his story because of his dedication to teach jazz to a new generation of musicians without the snobbery that sometimes gets passed down by the elder statesman so to speak. His explanations of his approach to teaching and playing that are such a deep and personal nature resonated within me. And then he took the stage and he let his music do the talking from there. It was a delicious treat and we're working on having him come to the LNMC for a live chat with our readers.

After the show my heart was pounding from the experience and I stood outside waiting for Digby to pick me up. When I got in her car a new experience was waiting for me and I'll let her tell you what happened.

Renewed Faith

I have,sadly, become something of a cynic in my old age and it's not a happy thing to be. The world is darker, inspiration harder to find and humans are constantly disappointing me. But today, my faith in the goodness of human nature was renewed.

Howie Klein asked John Amato and I to an event last night at the Grammy Museum, which is in downtown LA near the Staples center and the convention center. It was a fabulous Q&A and concert with the great Jazz trumpet player Terrance Blanchard and his band. Unfortunately, when I got back in my car after the event I found that my wallet was missing...read on. It has a happy ending.

As we live through another anniversary of the man-made disaster on the Gulf Coast and the shocking lack of a federal response that caused thousands to die needlessly, thoughts turn again to whether anybody remembers New Orleans and its environs, and whether the proper resources are being deployed to rehabilitate the region. If you listen to the President, of course, his Administration is doing a heckuva job down there. Lots of cabinet members have visited the region, to be followed by the President later this year. The White House has untangled some bureaucracy to allow for more federal assistance to reach the Gulf Coast, and the stimulus has enhanced recovery efforts. And even some local Republicans have praised his approach, particularly the renewed sense of confidence in FEMA.

But that's the White House's spin. And not everyone agrees with it. The Institute for Southern Studies has reported on coalition groups blasting the Army Corps of Engineers for their slow response to restoring the natural barriers - wetlands, marshes, and barrier islands - that could help prevent future hurricanes. New Orleans resident Harry Shearer has more on that. To their credit, the White House has created a federal task force to speed up coastal restoration projects. But on other issues, the ISS has given the Administration low marks.

The Institute of Southern Studies recently released a report that assesses how Washington has handled the storm's aftermath. The ISS asked 50 community leaders to grade the Obama administration's Katrina recovery efforts: Obama got a D+, and Bush was given a D-. If graded on an E for effort curve, Bush probably would have gotten the edge given his authorization of millions in Gulf Opportunity tax credits and bonds, and an extension of time under which developers could use them.

Meanwhile, Obama has done little in seven months beyond distributing $50 million in housing vouchers. Unfortunately, families either won't be able to use them because there aren't enough houses built yet, or the vouchers will be of little use because they only cover a fraction of rents, which have risen substantially since Katrina. He's also instituted a plan to sell FEMA mobile units to families for $1 or $5, but many of those trailers are toxic from formaldehyde leaks.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) did little for recovery and reinvestment in the Gulf Coast area that needed it the most. Since calculations were made based off current population numbers -- many displaced people throughout the country are still waiting to return -- fewer ARRA dollars reached these congressional districts. ARRA's tax credit exchange program, which cashes in states' low income housing tax credits, also excluded the Go Zone tax credits, leaving over 17,000 housing units hanging in the balance.

The Lower Ninth Ward, already struggling prior to the flood, has been particularly slow to return to stability. Only 20% of its residents have returned full-time, and the area has lagged far behind the tourist spots and the Garden District.

The neglect of the Gulf both during and after the storm will not get turned around quickly or easily. I'm tempted to cut the White House a little slack on this one. But on the current trajectory, New Orleans is looking more and more in the post-Katrina period like a restored home for the rich and connected, and a nightmare for the voiceless. And given the moral outrage that the response to the storm correctly engendered, that is unacceptable. We have an obligation to those who were left to rot in the fetid waters, not just to give them a return to the same inequality, but a chance at a better life. Should Obama visit the city before the year ends, he shouldn't go to Bourbon Street, but the Lower Ninth, and he should not just tell them what he will do, but back it up.

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Neal Boortz makes Ed Shultz's Psycho Talk for his latest hate filled screed comparing Katrina victims to "debris". I hope this means Boortz won't be making any more appearances on Ed's show.

From Think Progress: Neal Boortz: If New Orleans is rebuilt, the ‘debris that Katrina chased out’ will return.

This week only, our readers can download, free of charge, Greg Palast's film, "Big Easy to Big Empty: The Untold Story of the Drowning of New Orleans." Or donate and get a signed DVD. Watch the 1-minute trailer...

Who put out the hit on van Heerden?

Ivor van Heerden is the professor at Louisiana State University's Hurricane Center who warned the levees of New Orleans were ready to blow — months and years before Katrina did the job.

For being right, van Heerden was rewarded with ... getting fired. [See Katrina, Four Years Later: Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst]

But I've been in this investigating game long enough to know that van Heerden's job didn't die of natural causes or academic issues. This was a hit. Some very powerful folks wanted him disappeared and silenced — for good.

So who done it?

Here are the facts.

Dr. van Heerden has lots of friends, mostly the people of New Orleans, those who survived and cheered his fight to save their city. But he also has enemies, many of them, and they are powerful.

First, there is Big Oil. More than a decade ago, van Heerden pointed the finger at oil drilling as a culprit in threatening New Orleans and the Gulf Coast with flooding.

"Certainly he was critical of what the oil companies did to the coast," Louisiana engineer HJ Bosworth told me. "Seeing what kind of bad citizens they were. Dozens and dozens of pipeline canals just carved the living daylights out of the coast just to find some oil."

Well, we need oil, don't we?

True, but Bosworth, who advises Levees.org, a non-profit group that birddogs hurricane safety work, explained the connection between flooding New Orleans and oil drilling quantified by van Heerden's research. "Takes a million years to build (the protective coastal marsh); once you carve it up, it's just like bleeding a wild animal, hang it up, carve some holes in it, and the juice just drains out of it. Saltwater and tide invade. You make [the state] susceptible to flooding from coastal and tidal surges."

So I was amazed to learn that, shortly after van Heerden, wetlands protector, was given the heave-ho by LSU, a group calling itself "America's Wetland" gave the university a fat check for $300,000.

After a little digging, I found that it wasn't really "America's Wetland," the group with the oh-so-green name and love-Mother-Nature website, that provided the money. One-hundred percent of the loot, in fact, came from Chevron Oil Corporation. Chevron had merely "green-washed" the money through "Wetlands."

Was this Big Oil's "thank you" to LSU for canning van Heerden? The University refuses to talk to me about van Heerden's firing ("It's a confidential personnel matter").

Bosworth notes such a grant to the University "doesn't come without strings attached." And this "Wetland" grant appears to have some tangled threads. LSU will monitor the coast's environment, guided by a committee of what the school's PR office describes as "experts" in coastal infrastructure and hurricane research. But the school is pointedly excluding its own expert, van Heerden. Instead of van Heerden, LSU announced it will rely on representatives from Chevron — and Shell Oil.

You can't challenge Shell's expertise on coastal erosion. The Gulf Restoration Network has calculated that the oil giant, "has dredged 8.8 million cubic yards material while laying pipelines since 1983 causing the loss of 22,624 acres."

Shell too is a sponsor of "America's Wetland."

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Tonight on Air America: Greg Palast joins Crooks and Liars' John Amato, guest host of "Clout!" on your local progressive station or streaming live on AirAmericaRadio.com at 9pm Eastern.

This week, special for Crooks and Liars readers, download for free, Palast's film for Democracy Now!, "Big Easy to Big Empty: How the White House Drowned New Orleans."

There's another floater. Four years on, there's another victim face down in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Ivor van Heerden.

I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren't for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe:

"By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breached. Nobody."

On the night of August 29, 2005, van Heerden was shut in at the state emergency center in Baton Rouge, providing technical advice to the rescue effort. As Hurricane Katrina came ashore, van Heerden and the State Police there were high-fiving it: Katrina missed the city of New Orleans, turning east.

What they did not know was that the levees had cracked. For crucial hours, the White House knew, but withheld the information that the levees of New Orleans had broken and that the city was about to drown. Bush's boys did not notify the State of the flood to come, which would have allowed police to launch an emergency hunt for the thousands who remained stranded.

"Fifteen hundred people drowned. That's the bottom line," said von Heerden. He shouldn't have told me that. The professor was already in trouble for saying, publicly, that the levees around New Orleans were no good, too short, by 18". They couldn't stand up to a storm like Katrina. He said it months before Katrina hit -- in a call to the White House, and later in the press.

So, even before Katrina, even before our interview, the professor was in hot water. Van Heerden was told by LSU officials that his complaints jeopardized funding from the Bush Administration. They tried to gag him. He didn't care: he ripped off the gag and spoke out.

It didn't matter to Bush, to the state, to the university, that van Heerden was right -- devastatingly right. Exactly as van Heerden predicted, the levees could not stand up to the storm surge.

In 2006, I met van Heerden in his office at the university's hurricane center; a cubby filled with charts of the city under water. He's a soft-spoken, even-tempered man, given to understatement and academic reserve. But his words were hand grenades: the Bush White House did nothing about the levees, despite warning after warning.

Why? A hurricane is an Act of God. But a levee failure is an Act of Bush -- of the federal government. Under the Flood Control Act of 1928, once the levees break, it's Washington's responsibility to save lives -- and to compensate the victims for lost homes and lost loved ones.

By telling me this, the professor had to know he was putting his job on the line. This week marks the fourth anniversary of the drowning of New Orleans.

Shakoor Aljuwani of the Rebuilding Lives Coalition reminds me it is also the fourth year of exile for more than half of the low-income black residents who once lived in the Crescent City. In the Lower Ninth Ward, 81% have yet to return.

And it marks the end of Dr. van Heerden's career at LSU. They got him. Once the network cameras were turned away from New Orleans, as America and Anderson Cooper shifted attention to Brad and Angelina and other news, the University put an end to Dr. van Heerden. "In 2006 they started the nonsense - they stopped me from teaching. They tried last year to get faculty to vote me out."

His contract was not renewed; he was forced out too, dumped along with the chief of the Hurricane Center who led the academics who supported van Heerden's research. The Man Who Was Right was fired.

Continue reading »

This USAToday piece leaves out an important piece of the puzzle here. The company who sold the pumps was closely tied to the Bush family, at one time even employing Jeb Bush:

WASHINGTON — Huge flood-control pumps installed in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina don't protect the city adequately and the Army Corps of Engineers could have saved $430 million in replacement costs by buying proven equipment, a federal investigation finds.

The investigation by the federal Office of Special Counsel finds there was "little logical justification" for the corps' decision to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the "untested" hydraulic pumps, which are meant to empty millions of gallons of water from the below-sea-level city during storm-related floods.

Nope, no "logical" justification. Just political! From March 2007:

Meanwhile, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., asked the Government Accountability Office on Thursday to investigate the Corps and the contract it entered into with Moving Water Industries Corp.

MWI is owned by J. David Eller and his sons. Eller was once a business partner of former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a venture called Bush-El that marketed MWI pumps.

But wait, it gets even worse:

In 2002, the U.S. Justice Department amended its suit against Eller, alleging that he twice flew suitcases of cash to offshore tax havens to hide his assets, the St. Petersburg Times reported. The DOJ also claimed that MWI improperly used more than a third of a $74.3-million U.S. loan to pay a Nigerian agent for the company. In turn, that agent and other company officials paid Nigerian government officials involved in buying MWI's pumps, the lawsuit alleges. MWI denies the charges.

According to the paper:

Between 1985 and 1993, the government says, Eller flew on his company plane to the Bahamas and to Grand Cayman, once with a "large suitcase filled with currency" and once with a "large duffel bag or suitcase filled with currency." At both places, a chauffeured limousine whisked him and the money away. Eller told his pilot he was "moving his assets out of the United States," the lawsuit contends, calling it an effort to shield the money from creditors.

Eller's lawyer, William Scherer, said the flights never occurred and neither Eller nor MWI has accounts in either country.

The lawsuit by the George W. Bush Justice Department suggests no wrongdoing by Jeb Bush, who from 1988 to 1994 worked with Eller marketing MWI pumps to foreign countries, including Nigeria.

Indeed, the amended complaint omits allegations of influence-peddling by MWI -- including Eller's bringing Jeb Bush into the pump business -- leveled in the whistle-blower's recently unsealed lawsuit. That lawsuit prompted the federal investigation.

This begs a couple of questions: Why was a company under DOJ investigation for such serious charges given a major federal contract for New Orleans reconstruction in the first place? And why is the DOJ suit against MWI still unresolved after so many years?

Marsha Blackburn (Oblivious-TN) probably could have chosen a better example:

BLACKBURN: Let’s agree that we’re going to have PAYGO enforcement. That we’re not going to cry ‘emergency’ every time we have a Katrina, every time we have a Tsunami, every time we have a need for extra spending, that we don’t go call for a special appropriation that allows us to circumvent the PAYGO rules.

Well, I'm sure Blackburn will hold herself to that. I'm sure that any time a disaster threatens her state of Tennessee, she won't cry emergency and bother to get federal funding to help people in need. I'm sure that-

The President today declared a major disaster exists in the State of Tennessee and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts in the area struck by severe storms, tornadoes, and flooding on April 10, 2009.

Federal funding is available to State and eligible local governments and certain private nonprofit organizations on a cost-sharing basis for emergency work and the repair or replacement of facilities damaged by the severe storms, tornadoes, and flooding in Benton, McMinn, Rutherford, and Sequatchie Counties.

Well, OK, fine, but that's the President, I'm sure Marsha Blackburn HERSELF never requested emergency funding for her state of Tennessee--

Members of Tennessee Delegation Urge Disaster Declaration for Five Counties Affected by Flooding

WASHINGTON, D.C. U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and U.S. Representatives Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn. 4), Bart Gordon (D-Tenn. 6), and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn. 7) have joined Governor Phil Bredesen in requesting that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack issue a federal disaster declaration for five counties in Tennessee "to help farmers who have suffered crop losses and damage to farm equipment and structures as a result of excessive rain and extensive flooding that occurred in May." The five counties are Bedford, Hickman, Lewis, Moore and Perry.

According to their letter to Secretary Vilsack, a declaration would allow qualifying farmers "to apply for a variety of federal farm disaster programs - including supplemental farm revenue payments, livestock assistance and low-interest emergency loans - through their local U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency office."

OK, one time, fine, but there's no history of this---

Title: Letter to The Honorable Mike Johanns, Secretary, U.S. Department of Agriculture

Date: 07/12/2007

Alexander, Corker Join Tenn. Delegation In Requesting Disaster Declaration For Drought
from the Office of Senator Bob Corker

U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker joined other members of the Tennessee Congressional Delegation Tuesday in asking U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns to issue an agricultural disaster declaration for all 95 Tennessee counties due to the results of the ongoing drought.

Marsha Blackburn
Member of congress

What's your point? That Marsha Blackburn is a rank hypocrite whose statements don't match her actions?

Oh, that is your point?

Well, OK, I agree with you, then.

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There was so much insane gobbledygook that came out of Gov. Bobby Jindal's mouth last night that I could keep wring for days about it. I couldn't believe my ears when Bobby Jindal used the utter failures of the Bush administration over their "Brownie" handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster to attack the role of the federal government in our lives. Especially when the state of Louisiana has received billions of dollars from the federal government to help them recover.

The federal government has devoted more than $175 billion to the region since Katrina. It's unclear how much more money will be needed to fix the leftover damage. But nearly everyone agrees the federal government should continue investing heavily to strengthen the region's levees and make other flood control improvements to prevent a repeat of Katrina's devastation.

I'm sorry, but the federal government is a necessary player to help Americans in times of any kind of natural disasters. Even from Volcanoes. What was up with this Sheriff Lee that he praised? Oh, that's right, he's a race profiler who fits in perfectly in the GOP's world.

In the wake of Katrina, Lee grabbed national headlines by suggesting his deputies could randomly stop blacks to combat a rise in drug crimes caused by the displacement of low-income New Orleans residents.

He later abandoned the idea -- but never apologized.

In an earlier incident, Lee sparked a firestorm by ordering his force to arbitrarily stop “young blacks in rinky-dink cars” driving in white neighborhoods, according to The Associated Press. He backed off that plan, calling it a mistake after the NAACP called on him to resign.

Shortly before his death, Lee stoked controversy again, telling a TV reporter: "We know the crime is in the black community. Why should I waste time in the white community?"

And he completely ignores the fact that President Bush and all the Republicans voted to increase the federal deficit more than any other time in our history.

Bush ran up more debt for this country than all previous presidents combined.

Jack Cafferty asked the right question today: Are the Republicans in any position to lecture President Obama on fiscal responsibility? Being lectured by the Jindal's of the GOP is irresponsible and ridiculous. And it was creepy. I call him the Exorcist for a reason:

...in an essay Jindal wrote in 1994 for the New Oxford Review, a serious right-wing Catholic journal, Jindal narrated a bizarre story of a personal encounter with a demon, in which he participated in an exorcism with a group of college friends. And not only did they cast out the supernatural spirit that had possessed his friend, Jindal wrote that he believes that their ritual may well have cured her cancer.

Reading the article leaves no doubt that Jindal -- who graduated from Brown University in 1991, was a Rhodes Scholar, and had been accepted at Yale Law School and Harvard Medical School when he wrote the essay -- was completely serious about the encounter. He even said the experience "reaffirmed" his faith.

I don't think the media dared to mention this fact to America and it certainly wasn't part of Michael Gerson's wonderful Villager profile on Jindal. But he's the future of the Republican party as their party leader Rush Limbuagh warns them.

Joan Walsh astutely points out that there's also a deeply noxious racial stench to the governors like Jindal who are refusing these funds.

Even the wingnut base was shocked at his performance.

Tbogg tells us:

Continue reading »

I'm just flabbergasted. Knowing the extent of the damage down there, why on earth would we not be pushing to get it done? Unless, of course, this is yet another example of Disaster Capitalism and we're trying to get what's left of the inhabitants to leave and sell the land to rich people:

WASHINGTON — A massive effort to fix public works destroyed more than three years ago by the Gulf Coast hurricanes remains largely stalled, leaving more than $3.9 billion in federal aid unspent and key repairs far from complete.

The scale of that job is enormous. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has promised $5.8 billion to repair everything from flooded libraries and schools to sewer systems and roads that were ruined when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita obliterated huge sections of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005.

Nearly 3½ years after those storms hit, new FEMA accounting reports show two-thirds of the money to pay for permanent rebuilding work still has not been spent, the latest bottleneck in a recovery long beset by criticism that it has been too slow and inefficient. And despite a handful of high-profile successes, officials who had vowed to speed up the pace of repairs concede it is still going far more slowly than it should.

"I think it can go better. That's almost obvious," says James Stark, who runs FEMA's recovery effort in the region. "Public safety, health and education are critical. That's not proceeding as quickly as I think many people in southeast Louisiana would want." Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has ordered the agency to take a "fresh look" at those roadblocks. Its first report is due Tuesday.

January 16, 2009 C-SPAN
Jane Hamsher talked about the presidency of George W. Bush. She responded to telephone calls and electronic mail. Ms. Hamsher is a long-time critic of the administration. Clips of President Bush's 2002 State of the Union speech and January 15, 2009, farewell address were shown. See more CSPANJunkie Videos here.

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The tagline of Campbell Brown's CNN show is "No Bias. No Bull." I'll admit that I don't watch it too often, but if she really cuts through the bull every night like she did on Monday, I may just have to set the TiVo.

Bush: "Don't tell me the federal response was slow when there was 30,000 people pulled off roofs right after the storm passed."

Brown: "Many people will disagree over many aspects of the Bush legacy, but on the government's handling of Katrina... It is impossible to challenge what so many of us witnessed firsthand, what the entire country witnessed through the images on our television screens day and night.

"Mr. President, you cannot pat yourself on the back for that one. We will debate the war in Iraq, debate national security, the economy, and the rest of your legacy. Those debates will continue for years to come. But on how you handled Katrina, there is no debate."

Damn... You tell him, Campbell!

From daveyork0.

Retrospective montage on the subject of the lowlights and legacy of both terms of George W Bush, 43rd President of the United States.

Former Bush aides go on record saying that Hurricane Katrina was the "tipping point" of George Bush's presidency and that, after the federal government's pathetic response, he couldn't recover. Unfortunately for the residents of the gulf coast, President Bush wasn't the only one.

AP:

Hurricane Katrina not only pulverized the Gulf Coast in 2005, it knocked the bully pulpit out from under President George W. Bush, according to two former advisers who spoke candidly about the political impact of the government's poor handling of the natural disaster.

"Katrina to me was the tipping point," said Matthew Dowd, Bush's pollster and chief strategist for the 2004 presidential campaign. "The president broke his bond with the public. Once that bond was broken, he no longer had the capacity to talk to the American public. State of the Union addresses? It didn't matter. Legislative initiatives? It didn't matter. P.R.? It didn't matter. Travel? It didn't matter."