Project Katrina

As I’ve written about before (and here) Republicans and White House officials keep lying about the fact that there were no oil spills caused by Hurricane Katrina and Rita in an effort to convince the American public that more off-shore drilling is both a good idea and environmentally safe. Now we have Samuel Bodman, the head of the Department of Energy (DoE), the one man in the United States that should know the facts, lying to our faces that no oil spills or rigs were damaged by Katrina and Rita. It boggles the mind.

As I’ve written about before (and here) Republicans and White House officials keep lying about the fact that there were no oil spills caused by Hurricane Katrina and Rita in an effort to convince the American public that more off-shore drilling is both a good idea and environmentally safe. Now we have Samuel Bodman, the head of the Department of Energy (DoE), the one man in the United States that should know the facts, lying to our faces that no oil spills or rigs were damaged by Katrina and Rita. It boggles the mind.

Details are starting to emerge on how New Orleans are going to mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Mayor Ray Nagin plans to mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with a low-key bell-ringing at the time of the first levee breach and, later in the day, a candlelight vigil at Jackson Square.

[....]

Mr. Nagin said he doesn’t want to overdo it this year. However, he said the city would invite presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, congressional representatives and celebrities he didn’t identify.

The bell-ringing “is about the sadness of the event,” Mr. Nagin said, “but the afternoon is kind of like, ‘We got through it, celebrate our recovery and let’s point to the future.’ And that’s how I kind of see the day going.”

Ms. Quiett said the Jackson Square vigil is meant to remind people of the promise President Bush made in his September 2005 address: to do what it takes to help hurricane-affected citizens rebuild their communities and lives.

This is almost too sad for words:

For almost three years they have lain in a refrigerated warehouse in New Orleans—unclaimed, unwanted and, in some cases, unidentified.

Only now, as the city prepares to mark the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, are the last of the victims set to be laid to rest in what is expected to be the world’s biggest jazz funeral.

After delays caused by funding problems, bureaucracy and a remarkable scientific operation to put names to the remains, the 85 dead will be fêted on their final journey by brass bands and dancers before being interred at a new $1.5 million (£750,000) Hurricane Katrina memorial.

Playing his trumpet at the head of the parade—which will take place on August 29, three years to the day since the storm devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast—will be Frank Minyard, the coroner who led the effort to identify the bulk of Katrina’s 1,800-plus fatalities.

He has taken personal responsibility for the corpses that remain after relatives either declined to take custody themselves or could not be traced. Of the 85 bodies, as many as 50 are unidentified. “It’s sad. We don’t know their names or their stories. But these people deserve their rest,” Dr Minyard told The Times. “The music is to show that our dear departed friend or relative is now going on to a more great and glorious reward in Heaven.”

In an effort to garner some positive press coverage while Obama tours the world, the McCain campaign came up with the idea for a photo-op by having him give a speech from an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, right off the Louisiana coast.

But just an hour after the photo-op was finalized and the media was alerted, the event was canceled. The reason the campaign cited was bad weather caused by Hurricane Dolly.

But was the weather the real reason for the cancellation? Maybe the McCain “mind trust” didn’t want to visit the rig if the reporters on hand might notice the smell of diesel wafting through the French Quarter.

The Coast Guard closed 29 miles of the Mississippi River at New Orleans after a 600-foot tanker and a barge loaded with fuel oil collided Wednesday, breaking the barge in half.

Nobody was injured, but more than 419,000 gallons of heavy, almost tar-like fuel oil spilled from the barge, forming a slick 12 miles long, said Lt. Cdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau, a Coast Guard spokeswoman. […]

The double-hulled tanker Tintomara was loaded with about 4.2 million gallons of biodiesel and nearly 1.3 million gallons of styrene, but was not leaking, said Michael Wilson, president of ship management company Laurin Maritime (America) Inc. in Houston.

The collision occurred about 1:30 a.m. CDT just upriver from the Crescent City Connection, a pair of bridges between New Orleans’ east and west banks. A smell which many people thought was diesel was noticeable in the French Quarter and parts of New Orleans’ central business district.

This maybe the only smart decision the McCain camp make this week. Nothing says we can “drill safely” like an oil spill that closes 29 miles of the Mississippi River.

You got to be joking. First you were late in responding to the “Federal Flooding” of New Orleans. You spent millions to deliver ice that never arrived. You kept hundreds of relief works in hotels in Atlanta while you briefed them on god knows what.

You let contractors sell you tarps for thousands of dollars each and generally wasted millions, and millions because of lack of oversight. And you gave freaking residents trailers contaimed with formaldehyde. Oh and you held fake press conferences in an attempt to bolster what little creditability you had left (that would be none actually).

And with all of that you are now asking for immunity from lawsuits related to the formaldehyde trailers, even though internal EPA documents show you were telling residents there were no problems while you were sending emails telling employees not to enter them cause they were toxic.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is requesting immunity from lawsuits filed on behalf of Gulf Coast hurricane victims who claim they were exposed to dangerous fumes while living in government-issued trailers.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt is scheduled to hear FEMA’s bid to be dismissed from a series of consolidated cases filed against the federal government and the companies that supplied FEMA with tens of thousands of trailers after Katrina and then Rita in 2005.

Lawyers for Gulf Coast storm victims accuse FEMA of negligence for sheltering them in trailers with elevated levels of formaldehyde, a preservative used in construction materials that can induce breathing problems and is believed to cause cancer.

In court papers, FEMA’s lawyers told the judge the agency is entitled to immunity from such claims challenging its response to disasters such as Katrina.

National Public Radio (NPR) has an interview with House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina and Congressman Charlie Melancon of Louisiana who are part of a Democratic congressional delegation touring the Gulf Coast. You can listen to it here.

Via the Daily Dish (Andrew Sullivan):

For some reason, while I was researching various blog posts I got interested the differences between McCain’s and Obama’s websites, and in particular the policy information they make available. I think it started when I decided to check out reports that McCain had no energy policy. It turned out that you could find bits of one, if you were prepared to slog through his various speeches, but at the time, his Issues page did not have an entry for energy. (Now it does.) I then noticed that, as I said earlier, it doesn’t have an entry for foreign policy either. (It still doesn’t, though there is a page on Iraq.) I started poking around, and the contrast between McCain’s and Obama’s Issues pages is really striking.

Here’s a list of issues that Obama has a page on and McCain doesn’t: Civil Rights, Disabilities, Faith, Family, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Poverty, Service, Seniors and Social Security, Technology, Urban Policy, Women. That’s a pretty striking list. Moreover, he has a page called ‘Additional Issues‘ with links to plans on Arts, Child Advocacy, Katrina, Science, Sportsmen, and Transportation. Of these, only Sportsmen has a counterpart on McCain’s site. Finally, under ‘People’, you can find separate policy pages on issues relevant to Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (one-pagers in six languages, a longer version in English), First Americans, Labor, Latinos, and LGBT.

On Sunday’s CNN Late Edition Roy Blunt (R-MO), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, joined what seems like a never-ending chorus of Republicans (including McCain himself) that have been making the demonstrably false claim that there weren’t any major spills caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Blunt: If there was ever a test of this system it’s in the one place that we do drill which is the gulf—4,000 platforms in the gulf—thank God we’ve got them. 238 of them were injured by either Katrina or Rita. There was really no oil loss of any appreciable kind at any of those. Less oil was lost than used to seep up out of the gulf floor.”

In fact, as I continue to note each time a new version of this lie is spoken, there were at least 124 oil spills as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The website Skytruth.org even has posted satellite images of the spills (posted above) as seen from space. The EPA called the spills “worse than the worst-case scenario.”