Project Katrina

I’ve been meaning to write this up for a couple days after I first noticed it. Now of course I hope it goes without saying Barack Obama shouldn’t be using Hurricane Gustav as a marketing or press opportunity.

But still, how events like this are dealt with in a presidential campaign still shapes the public’s perceptions. And Obama is way behind John McCain in something that should be stupid simple.

Now I am not suggesting that Obama hop on a plane to New Orleans and get photographed on a levee. But what I am suggesting is that the party that let Katrina happen and the terrible state of New Orleans three years later, shouldn’t appear to be out in front on Gustav.

I mean don’t we have somebody in the Democratic party smart enough to present Obama’s stance on New Orleans and Gustav in a dignified manner, showing both his deep concern and involvement (which I am sure are is true)? Well it would appear they don’t.

As of noon on Sunday (8/31) Obama’s official website was still promoting his convention acceptance speech, with no mention of Gustav on the front page. Then by the morning of Monday (9/1) his site looked like the below screen capture. No personal message from Obama, just a link to the Red Cross.

Now take a look at McCain’s site, which has been this way since the early afternoon on Sunday (8/31).

And we wonder why we keep losing elections. Whoever fell asleep at the wheel on this issue at the Obama campaign needs to be looking for another.

This morning President Bush while talking about Hurricane Gustav said:

One thing that’s for certain, when Congress comes back they got to understand that we need more domestic energy, not less. And one place to find it is offshore America, lands that have been, have been, uh, taken off the book, so to speak, by congressional law. And now they need to give us a chance to find more oil and natural gas here at home.

Well when your “base” thinks you are an idiot I guess that kind of sums up things.

Saying the response of the Federal government to Gustav was superior to Katrina really isn’t saying much of anything is it. From the Associated Press:

Relieved and upbeat, President Bush declared Monday that the government had responded “a lot better” to Hurricane Gustav than it did to deadly Hurricane Katrina, which obliterated the Gulf Coast three years ago and damaged his administration’s credibility for handling major crises.

Eager to show that officials had learned the tragic lessons of Katrina, Bush scrapped an opening-night speech at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., and flew instead to emergency command centers in Texas. He landed shortly after a weakened Gustav hit Cocodrie, La., 72 miles southwest of New Orleans. Once feared as a monster storm more frightening than Katrina, Gustav struck only a glancing blow on New Orleans.

“The coordination on this storm is a lot better than on—than during Katrina,” said Bush, who left a hurricane briefing in Austin smiling, shaking hands with emergency workers and posing for pictures.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times reports in an op-ed something I’ve not heard before, which is troubling to say the least.:

Some observers have pointed out that daily briefings on preparations for Gustav, which should be coming from the Federal Emergency Management Agency—which is, you know, supposed to manage emergencies—have been coming, instead, from the U.S. military’s Northern Command.

It’s not hard to see why. Top positions at FEMA are no longer held by obviously unqualified political hacks and cronies. But a recent report by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security said that the agency has made only “limited progress” in the area of “mission assignments”—that is, in its ability to coordinate the response to a crisis. So FEMA still isn’t up to carrying out its principal task.

That’s no accident. FEMA’s degradation, from one of the government’s most admired agencies to a laughingstock, wasn’t an isolated event; it was the result of the G.O.P.’s underlying philosophy. Simply put, when the government is run by a political party committed to the belief that government is always the problem, never the solution, that belief tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Key priorities are neglected; key functions are privatized; and key people, the competent public servants who make government work, either leave or are driven out.

So almost exactly to the day, three years after Katrina hit, FEMA still can’t even handle something as basic as briefing the president on Hurricane Gustav. Sad, sad times.

Who knows what is going to happen, but if the levees fail again three years after billions of dollars was appropriated to fix them, the failure of George Bush and the entire Republican party should really be clear to anybody with half a mind.

On the eve of Hurricane Gustav’s expected arrival, many in New Orleans, from residents of the Ninth Ward to the city’s mayor to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, have their doubts about whether the levees will hold.

“There is a real likelihood of getting some overtopping. Additionally, rain is a big factor here,” said DHS chief Michael Chertoff about water pouring over the tops of the levees.

Three years since Katrina and $3 billion later, the levees still leak and much of the repair work remains incomplete.

“Huge areas of Louisiana are going to be devastated. We’re going in essence to see what Katrina didn’t destroy, what Rita didn’t destroy in 2005 being destroyed now in 2008,” said Ivor Van Heerden, a professor at Louisiana State University who wrote a book about why the levees broke during Katrina.

At best the levees are estimated to be able to withstand water levels rising at the rate of an inch and hour. The coming storm, however, promises much more. In some places storm surge could reach 18 feet.

The Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with repairing the levees, says work was being accelerated.

Despite Congress authorizing $12.8 billion to rebuild the levees, only $3 billion has been spent. The engineers blame red tape, saying the studies, approvals and environmental committees have all slowed down the work.

The Army Corps has already been blaming environmentalists for their complete lack of process in rebuilding the levees, but considering that the local press recently found engineers filling the levees with newspaper, their protestations aren’t even really credible. In fact, they failed to use the money and are scrambling to finish in a matter of days what they haven’t done in three years since Katrina hit and the problem was identified.

On Rush Limbaugh’s comedy radio show today he asked former Governor and Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee (R-AR) how he believed the Republican party should respond if Hurricane Gustav makes landfall in New Orleans during the Republican National Convention next week.

“I think they’ve called in Pat Robertson to pray it off the coast,” Huckabee jokingly responded. Listen to this segment:

Yeah this is really, really funny Huck. Maybe you think the best way to protect an American city is to pray, yet some of us think there is another solution. Build levees and pumping station to the specs required.