Project Katrina

This is a statement by Stan Collier in a NYT article today, who was the officer in charge of a Swift in Vietnam. In a nutshell “Swift Boat” vets want to reclaim the name “Swift Boat,” folks that served with honor in Vietnam and not the verb it now is to smear somebody in a political campaign.

Tristero at Hullabaloo sums up the “real” issue better then I could:

Indeed we all have, whether or not we ever saw a Swift Boat. But this is what movement conservatives do with emotionally weighty situations or actions. They demean everyone involved.

In Schiavo, they took one of the worst moral dilemmas a family has to face—a decision which clearly must be private and for which definite legal guidelines are established—and put the family and the country through hell in the most cynical fashion imaginable, running roughshod over the Constitution for no reason whatsoever except to make the point that they had the power to do it. They took Katrina—where the fault was clearly an incompetent federal government, i.e. the Bush administration—and blamed the victims for their own suffering, even while they were still up to their necks in sewage. They characterized the tortures endured at Abu Ghraib as mere schoolboy pranks, demeaning the suffering of numerous totally innocent men, women, and children.

And they regularly demean the achievements of heroes, dismissing or laughing at them when they don’t like their politics and dragging everyone into the mud in their desperate, psychotic propensity to do anything and everything to gain power. name “Swift Boat” or what he was, folks that served with honor in Vietnam and not the verb it now is to smear sombody.

I mean it just won’t stop. From The St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

The barrier quickly erected to try to protect Winfield from the flooding Mississippi River was breached this morning, and nearly 130 homes were reported damaged or destroyed, authorities said.

Lincoln County emergency operations officials said a 1,600-foot Hesco barrier, used to protect troops in Iraq, was heavily leaking and topped about 4:30 a.m. National Guard members, who had erected the barrier, were withdrawn. Alarms sounded, warning nearby residents to evacuate.

At least 92 homes have been destroyed, and 36 damaged, officials said. Thirty-six more homes have been impacted by the flooding. Officials estimate that 650 more homes are inaccesible to emergency officials, so the extent of the damage isn’t yet determined.

When serving in the Louisiana Congress after Katrina hit the Gulf Coast now Gov. Bobby Jindal blasted the Bush administration for “widespread incompetence of the federal, state and local government response.”

But as Jindal makes a news show tour to promote expanded drilling off the shores of Louisiana he appears to be incompetent about what has happened in his own state. On Fox Noise this exchange cured:

Question: Real fast, Governor, the price of oil went up five bucks a barrel today. You’ve been drilling off the coast of Louisiana for a number of years. Any oil spills to worry about?

JINDAL: You know, that’s one of the great unwritten success stories, after Katrina and Rita, these awful storms, no major spills.

Well it appears Jindal is totally clueless about the happenings in he own state post Katrina. The Minerals Management Service reported that 113 oil platforms were “totally destroyed”—a total of 124 offshore spills. In fact the damage was so serve you could see the spills from space (picture here) The EPA called the spills “worse than the worst-case scenario.”

In my neck of the world, right outside of St. Louis, people have pretty much been working 24/7 to save their commuinites. Although there is still some concern, most believe we’ve seen the worse and the levees will continue to hold. Reuters reports:

Walls and levees held back the cresting Mississippi River on Sunday as requests for government aid poured in from homeowners and businesses swamped by the worst Midwest flooding in 15 years.

Across from St. Louis, where the river remained near the crest reached on Friday, Cahokia Mayor Frank Bergman said his city of 17,000 had escaped disaster by a few feet meters.

“We got lucky,” he said as he walked a 50-year-old network of levees and flood walls that withstood the river’s rise. River water that seeped under the levees at a few spots had been cordoned off by walls of sandbags.

The Boston Globe has by far the most amazing photo essay on the flooding in Cedar Rapids Iowa. Many more photos here.

This little town just a couple hours from me highlights why we have to rework how we hand insurance and government aid. It is just one story of many, but Time Magazine happened to pick of their story.

It was early evening in Grand Tower, Ill., and Josh Franklin, 23, was standing outside his aunt’s double-wide trailer. He’d like to move away from this community of 585 people to Carbondale, a college town about half an hour’s drive to the north. But he can’t afford to. Grand Tower isn’t much of anyplace anymore. Its last restaurant closed shortly after the great flood of 1993. There isn’t a bookstore. Don’t even ask about wi-fi access. “If we get a major flood,” he says, “it’s all over. A lot of small towns, they’ve just disappeared. We’re going to be next.” The floods are certainly coming. And who knows when the next big earthquake will hit, since the town sits within the New Madrid Seismic Zone, one of the continent’s most violent.

This tiny town on Illinois’s southern tip is caught between catastrophes, literally. A dispute with the Federal Government has resulted in its loss of flood insurance— unless the impoverished town takes expensive measures, like hoisting homes and the few remaining businesses on stilts a dozen feet into the air. But if they scratch together the money to do so, it will be impossible to afford earthquake insurance, which is already prohibitively expensive.

Now Grand Tower residents are anxiously watching the surrounding rivers. Stubborn bands of storms have saturated the region’s corn and soybean fields, swelling the Mississippi River and its tributaries above St. Louis, Mo. Today the rising waters were only about two hours’ drive to the north. Some 21 Illinois counties and all of Missouri have been declared disaster zones, and dozens of points along the Mississippi River’s levees in both states have ruptured. “We’re just standing by, hoping for the best but expecting the worst,” says Burke “Bear” Ellett, 49, Grand Tower’s mayor for the past dozen years. If the floods ravage the town, there probably won’t be any money to rebuild it.

Well this isn’t good news, but really something we’ve known for a while. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports the city of New Orleans is danger of massive flooding if it is hit by only a Cat 2 hurricane.

That assessment has been based on levee heights across New Orleans that indicated a strong storm surge could once again place the Crescent City underwater. New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, that Category 3 storm killed more than 1,800 people and caused more than $81 billion in damages.

Levee heights were to blame for much of the flooding associated with Hurricane Katrina and the Army Corps of Engineers were given over $7 billion to repair and construct levees capable of handling rising water yet the city is said to still be among the most vulnerable in the country when it comes to levees being breached.

Since I have been hitting McCain pretty hard over his response, or lack thereof to the floods in my home state and all around it, I spent some time looking around on his site for any response. This two sentence press release about was all I could locate. Guess he is busy.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to all those impacted by the flooding throughout the Midwest. Cindy and I would like to extend our sympathies to all those who have lost loved ones, and stand ready to help those in the Midwest to recover and rebuild.

There have been no shortages of stories about how KBR has been over charging the military on Iraq-related contracts and then, and this is just precious, threatening to cut off the services they are suspected of overcharging for if the bills weren’t paid.

Well it seems overcharging might be standard operating procedure at KBR. The Department of Defense Inspector General thinks the same thing occurred with KBR’s clean-up efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

The Houston Chronicle reports:

The Pentagon Inspector General said he could find no documentation in Navy contracting files to back up KBR claims it paid fair and reasonable prices to subcontractors that served meals in New Orleans.

“The prices KBR agreed to pay were greatly inflated,” the 86-page audit said.

“The Navy paid approximately $4.1 million for meals and services we calculate should have cost $1.7 million, more than a $2.3 million difference,” said the audit, signed by Assistant Inspector General for Acquisition Management Richard Jolliffe.

[….] Altogether, the audit requested that the Navy seek refunds of at least $8.5 million for “inappropriate” payments to KBR.

This is just a flat out smack down from Daily Kos related to the differences between how McCain and Obama have responded to the floods that are devastating communities all around me:

Disaster struck the midwest last week as flood waters shattered previous records, drowning crops and putting tens of thousands of people out of their homes. The full effects of the flood will be felt nationwide as gas prices could increase another 15% and food prices could increase another 25-30%. No doubt, this would be a serious issue for an aspiring presidential candidate. Obama answered the call this weekend, touring the hard hit areas, rolling up his sleeves to fill sandbags, and taking action with local leaders.

Obama’s camp also began putting out an urgent, nationwide plea to help flood victims—making it the front page headline on his website:

And how did John McCain react? He was busy rolling up his sleeves—filling up moneybags at a California “finance event.” For all the talk about Republicans disliking California and “west coast values”, they sure do spend a lot of time at California fundraisers. You may recall that while New Orleans drowned, GWB and McCain were miles away, sharing a little cake between friends. In a sad case of deja vu, McCain is once again nowhere to be found. What was featured on John McCain’s website over the weekend? John McCain, of course. So, how about today? Is there a serious focus on the growing tragedy of the floods? Nope, back to the alleged former Clinton supporter on the front page. A small flood donation button does appear, after scrolling a bit, right after the plea for McCain donations and the request that you add five “friends” for McCain. Apparently, adding more names to McCain’s fundraising email list takes priority over a flooded midwest and a country about to be smacked with even higher prices on everything from gas to milk and bread. And despite the fact that McCain’s team has thus far tried to mimic every aspect of Obama’s website and logo, they don’t feel the need to mimic his compassion and leadership in a time of dire need.

And even now, as the midwest continues to flood, McCain is hopping back and forth between Texas fundraisers. Mr. Moneybags doesn’t seem to have time for flood victims in the next few days. According to his campaign schedule, McCain is going to be very busy getting to know GWB’s oil and energy friends in Texas.

Actions and pass performance often are powerful factors in determing future actions. We ought to all keep the above in mind when we vote in November.