Shit. Dammit.

Brown? Head of FEMA? Was asked to resign from his previous position as commissioner of an association's horse show judges. For "a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

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Brown? Head of FEMA? Was asked to resign from his previous position as commissioner of an association's horse show judges. For "a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures."

Yeah, but he's a friend of Bush's, right?

All part of Bush's campaign promise to "Change the Tone" of Washington politics. Or something.

eta: OK, he was a "GOP Activist." I forget where I heard that he was a friend of Bush's - I might have misremembered.

I guess he did. To the sound of one hand clapping. Or something.

Some more BBC perspective:

********

New Orleans crisis shames Americans

By Matt Wells c BBC News, Los Angeles

At the end of an unforgettable week, one broadcaster on Friday bitterly encapsulated the sense of burning shame and anger that many American citizens are feeling.

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

It has been a profoundly shocking experience for many across this vast country who, for the large part, believe the home-spun myth about the invulnerability of the American Dream.

The party in power in Washington is always happy to convey the impression of 50 states moving forward together in social and economic harmony towards a bigger and better America.

That is what presidential campaigning is all about.

But what the devastating consequences of Katrina have shown - along with the response to it - is that for too long now, the fabric of this complex and overstretched country, especially in states like Louisiana and Mississippi, has been neglected and ignored.

Borrowed time

The fitting metaphors relating to the New Orleans debacle are almost too numerous to mention.

First there was an extraordinary complacency, mixed together with what seemed like over-reaction, before the storm. The city's hurricane shelters grew increasingly filthy and crime-ridden

A genuinely heroic mayor orders a total evacuation of the city the day before Katrina arrives, knowing that for decades now, New Orleans has been living on borrowed time.

The National Guard and federal emergency personnel stay tucked up at home.

The havoc of Katrina had been predicted countless times on a local and federal level - even to the point where it was acknowledged that tens of thousands of the poorest residents would not be able to leave the city in advance.

No official plan was ever put in place for them.

Abandoned to the elements

The famous levees that were breached could have been strengthened and raised at what now seems like a trifling cost of a few billion dollars.

The Bush administration, together with Congress, cut the budgets for flood protection and army engineers, while local politicians failed to generate any enthusiasm for local tax increases.

Too often in the so-called "New South", they still look positively 19th Century

New Orleans partied-on just hoping for the best, abandoned by anyone in national authority who could have put the money into really protecting the city.

Meanwhile, the poorest were similarly abandoned, as the horrifying images and stories from the Superdome and Convention Center prove.

The truth was simple and apparent to all. If journalists were there with cameras beaming the suffering live across America, where were the officers and troops?

The neglect that meant it took five days to get water, food, and medical care to thousands of mainly orderly African-American citizens desperately sheltering in huge downtown buildings of their native city, has been going on historically, for as long as the inadequate levees have been there.

Divided city

I should make a confession at this point: I have been to New Orleans on assignment three times in as many years, and I was smitten by the Big Easy, with its unique charms and temperament.

But behind the elegant intoxicants of the French Quarter, it was clearly a city grotesquely divided on several levels. It has twice the national average poverty rate.

The government approach to such deprivation looked more like thoughtless containment than anything else. It will be many weeks before the flood waters are cleared

The nightly shootings and drugs-related homicides of recent years pointed to a small but vicious culture of largely black-on-black crime that everyone knew existed, but no-one seemed to have any real answers for.

Again, no-one wanted to pick up the bill or deal with the realities of race relations in the 21st Century. (continued...)

( continues...)

Too often in the so-called "New South", they still look positively 19th Century.

"Shoot the looters" is good rhetoric, but no lasting solution.

Uneasy paradox

It is astonishing to me that so many Americans seem shocked by the existence of such concentrated poverty and social neglect in their own country.

In the workout room of the condo where I am currently staying in the affluent LA neighbourhood of Santa Monica, an executive and his personal trainer ignored the anguished television reports blaring above their heads on Friday evening.

Either they did not care, or it was somehow too painful to discuss.

When President Bush told "Good Morning America" on Thursday morning that nobody could have "anticipated" the breach of the New Orleans levees, it pointed to not only a remote leader in denial, but a whole political class.

The uneasy paradox which so many live with in this country - of being first-and-foremost rugged individuals, out to plunder what they can and paying as little tax as they can get away with, while at the same time believing that America is a robust, model society - has reached a crisis point this week.

Will there be real investment, or just more buck-passing between federal agencies and states?

The country has to choose whether it wants to rebuild the levees and destroyed communities, with no expense spared for the future - or once again brush off that responsibility, and blame the other guy.

Is there some reason why Arkansas and Oklahoma are being brushed over if people are going to Arizona and WV?

Governor Mike Huckabee spoke to the press about Arkansas welcoming and preparing for refugees early in the crisis. The thing to consider though is that Arkansas is mostly rural—its largest city has 40,000 fewer people than Baton Rouge, and it's the only city in the entire state with more than 100,000 people. There simply aren't facilities in any one place to handle hurricane victims en masse. People are opening their homes to displaced folks all over the state (and here in Tennessee as well), but it's mostly happening on an individual level.

If the massive death toll and disease-spawning conditions necessitate mass cremations for public safety, I have suggestions for who we should use as kindling.

On the bright side, I went through my closet and drawers, and actually found a fair amount of nice, lightweight clothing that I can send. Among other things, I'm sending a University of Alaska Anchorage Seawolves t-shirt (snazzy one, never worn), and the thought of someone in Texas wearing it just tickles me to no end.

Plus, it appears that all the free sample sized shampoo, conditioner, lotion, sewing kits, and shower caps that I've been collecting from hotels may actually get a chance to be of benefit to someone.

But paypal wouldn't take my credit card for the Barry Manilow thing. I wonder if they're just too busy, or something. There shouldn't be anything wrong with it.

Did someone already post this? I don't remember seeing it and, somehow, I think the stupidity would have stuck with me. From the Times-Picayune:

Bush visit halts food delivery
By Michelle Krupa
Staff writer

Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.

The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana five days after Katrina made landfall as a Category 4 storm, said Melancon’s chief of staff, Casey O’Shea.

“We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won’t let helicopters fly,” O’Shea said Friday afternoon.

The food was expected to be in the hands of storm survivors after the president left the devastated region Friday night, he said.

I saw it, but I don't remember if it was here or elsewhere. Every time I think that I have reached the limit of how much my mind can be boggled, something else comes along and boggles it more.

I'm just a big boggle myself these days. Shake me up and see how many words you can spell.

In unrelated news, isn't the phrase "BTK Killer" redundant?