Polling the room

If today's New York Times editorial about the government's failure to grasp the fall of New Orleans was a tad dainty for you, others were happy to rev up the rhetoric.

First is Rude Pundit:

Here's the Rude Pundit's fuckin' amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Fuck all yer anti-choice, save the flag bullshit amendments. Here it goes: No motherfucker who became wealthy due to inheritance is allowed to be President. No pampered pukes who get their hands dirty only as a lark. No asshole socially-connected cocksuckers who own three, four homes, fuck, no one who owns a huge fuckin' house they call a "vacation home." Sure, sure, we may have to sacrifice a Kennedy or two along the way, but, shit, and c'mon, between George Bush I's golfing during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 (which was a double fuck-up because not only was he allegedly the President, but he was in the middle of a campaign to do it again) and now George Bush II's, well, fuck, golfing and goofin' on the guitar when a million of his citizens are displaced and over half of them are fucked for good, we can sacrifice a potential liberal or two to ensure that there's never a President Jenna.

For there he was, our goddamned President, standing there in the picturesque Rose Garden, surrounded, like Al Capone with his capos, by his cabinet, as if to say, "Don't worry - you won't have to rely on me." Having been pried away from his "working vacation" like a meth addict from an iodine factory, Bush appeared irritated that he had to talk to us last night. He smirked, he gave a campaign-like laundry list of shit heading to New Orleans and elsewhere, he told us what we already fuckin' knew from CNNMSNBCFox: that Hurricane Katrina was major, that his "folks" around him were ready to do their jobs, but, hell, at least he didn't mention how jim-fuckin-dandy Iraq is.

Next, national treasure Angry Black Bitch:

If we follow “Scooter logic”, we should blame the whole mess on Mexico, claim they have the ability to manufacture hurricanes in a lab, produce diagrams to show such a hurricane manufacturing process and invade Mexico after the rest of the world calls us crazy. Then, after it is proven they didn’t manufacture the hurricane, Scooter would trench in and plea with us to “stay the course”. Meanwhile, the hurricane damage would be left half cleaned up, Mexicans would rise up against us and be labeled an insurgency and Scooter would then use that insurgency as a justification to…all together now…stay the course!

The South will rebuild. A bitch comes from Southern stock and they will survive and find a way to thrive.

But right now all my ass can say is shit, fuck and shit again.

David Brooks, of all people, provides a useful history lesson and predicts that political tumult will follow:

We'd like to think that the stories of hurricanes and floods are always stories of people rallying together to give aid and comfort. And, indeed, each of America's great floods has prompted a popular response both generous and inspiring. But floods are also civic examinations. Amid all the stories that recur with every disaster - tales of sudden death and miraculous survival, the displacement and the disease - there is also the testing.

Civic arrangements work or they fail. Leaders are found worthy or wanting. What's happening in New Orleans and Mississippi today is a human tragedy. But take a close look at the people you see wandering, devastated, around New Orleans: they are predominantly black and poor. The political disturbances are still to come.

James Wolcott declares that "New Orleans died for Bush's sins" and quotes at length from Paul Craig Roberts:

What a terrible casualty of the Iraqi war – one of our oldest and most beautiful cities, a famous city, a historic city.

Distracted by its phony war on terrorism, the U.S. government had made no preparations in the event Hurricane Katrina brought catastrophe to New Orleans. No contingency plan existed. Only now after the disaster are FEMA and the Corps of Engineers trying to assemble the material and equipment to save New Orleans from the fate of Atlantis.

Also -- and pardon me if you've already heard this -- but for a large part of the day, FEMA was funneling Hurricane Katrina donations to a Pat Robertson front organization. This organization was previously found to have given economic support to one of Robertson's diamond mines in Zaire.

Lastly, while thousands of Americans suffer and others slowly die, the American secretary of state went shopping for luxury goods.