Laura Bush today said it was "disgusting" to accuse her husband of not caring about the black residents of New Orleans. After all, he did such a good job on their behalf....What's really "disgusting" can be found in Time's expose of FEMA chief Michael Brown's resume. The newsmagazine found that Brown claimed he had experience in "emergency services oversight" when he served as "an assistant city manager" in Edmond, Oklahoma. Turns out he was merely an assistant to the manager and had no authority over anyone or anything. An Edmond official told Time that Brown was "more like an intern." And this was not the only example of padding--or lying--the newsmagazine discovered on Brown's resume. This crony--who is only at FEMA because he was a college chum of Bush's 2000 campaign manager--has got to go. [UPDATE: Hours after, I wrote this the news came that Brown was being "reassigned" and would no longer oversee the relief efforts in NOLA. Reassignment is not enough. He and the other inexperienced FEMA officials who have their jobs due to political connections ought to be canned.] And perhaps Laura Bush should direct her disgust at a scoundrel like Brown and the people responsible for placing him in charge of an agency that should have done a much better job protecting and serving the poor black people of New Orleans and Mississippi and all the victims of Katrina.
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SOMEONE DOESN'T LIKE THIS SITE. If you have had trouble loading this site today or contributing comments, my apologies. This morning, www.davidcorn.com was the target of a mailbomb. Within 10, minutes, the site received 79,000 emails. Naturally, the server was not pleased and shut itself down. My web wizards reacted quickly--much faster than the White House did in response to Katrina--and discovered what they call a "very intelligent and clever" attempt to crash this site by exploiting a possible weakness in Movable Type. The point was to get the server to generate a garbage random message and, in a way, send that message to itself--over and over. This sabotage campaign dates back to last September. [CORRECTION: I misunderstood one point. This attack began on September 5, 2005, just days ago. At a time when most Americans were concerned with the tragedy in New Orleans and Mississippi, some hacker thought it was important to bring down this site.] But this morning, one of these emails clogged up the pipe, and thousands got backed up. If I understand the techno stuff correctly, the hacker had caused the server to flood itself. "This is a good one," says one of the web wizards. " We've never seen anything like this." To deal with the problem, the wizards had to remove a file that permits comments. Thus, once again, the comments section is down. They are now trying to talk to the Movable Type people to figure out a fix. They tell me MT is sometimes difficult to deal with. So please be patient. And keep checking back for the return of comments. Remember, this is happening because someone out there wanted to stop you and me from sharing information.
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SIMPLY PUT. I received the following email from former CIA analyst Larry Johnson at 1:31 am. It speaks for itself:

Check out this paragraph in today's (Friday) New York Times:

The debate began after officials realized that Hurricane Katrina had exposed a critical flaw in the national disaster response plans created after the Sept. 11 attacks. According to the administration's senior domestic security officials, the plan failed to recognize that local police, fire and medical personnel might be incapacitated.

WHAT!!!!?

After 9-11 and the death of over 300 Fire Fighters, the death of 20 plus police, and the collapse of the City's Emergency Operations Center, these boneheads "failed to recognize" that local emergency response personnel might be incapacitated.   Have they been asleep for the last four years? This is a fucking outrage.
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Johnson is right. Anyone care to argue with this?
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MORE FROM KRISTOL ON BUSH'S INCOMPETENCE. A few days ago, I noted that one of my favorite quotes of recent days was Bill Kristol's remark that Bush is not good on execution. Today, Kristol told NPR: "Confidence in his competence--that's taken a bit of a hit." I particularly enjoyed how Kristol said this in a matter-of-fact manner. But I suppose if you're going to have a commander-in-chief mount the invasion, occupation and economic and political reconstruction of another country, it's no big deal if that fellow is lousy on execution or incompetent.
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NEOCON DENIAL. Speaking of neocons who have driven this country into a ditch in Iraq, in today's Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer (who takes a whack at Bush and FEMA) claims global warming has nothing to do with natural disasters, dismissing talk of such a link as "stupidity." He writes, "there is no relationship between global warming and the frequency and intensity of Atlantic hurricanes. Period." His "period" is serious. He explains his point no further. But is Krauthammer a climatologist? In the scientific journal Nature, Kerry Emanuel, a climatologist at MIT, reported in July that there may well be a link between global warming and an increased destructive force of hurricanes. He wrote:

I find that the record of net hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multi-decadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming. My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in tropical cyclone destructive potential, and--taking into account an increasing coastal population--a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century.

A few days later, National Geographic reported,

According to hurricane historian Jay Barnes of Pine Knoll Shores, North Carolina, ocean heat is the key ingredient for hurricane formation. More heat could "generate more storms and more intense hurricanes," he said.

If Krauthammer knows better, let him prove so. Krauthammer's editors do the Post's readers a disservice by not factchecking Krauthammer. Krauthammer made a rather definitive statement: there is no relationship between global warming and the power of hurricanes. Emanuel, Barnes, and the editors of Nature believe there is reason to consider the opposite is true. So why should Krauthammer be permitted to issue such an unfounded, antiscientific and imperious conclusion within a paper that supposedly promotes accuracy and truth-telling? That's my question for the editors.
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AFTER THE FLOOD, THE UN. It's no wonder the Bushies detest the United Nations. Just when the Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina shows the world that the most super superpower is not so super, here comes the UN to point out some other--shall we say--problem areas for the United States. In its annual Human Development Report, the UN Development Program measures and charts various economic and social indicators. And the United States doesn't always fare well. In income inequality, Namibia, Brazil, South Africa and Chile top the list. The United States is in the middle, while Egypt, Poland, France, Russia, Albania, Hungary and Sweden score better. (The obvious response is to say its better to be poor in the United States than in Ethiopia, but this measurement shows what a country does with what it has.) The report notes that the infant mortality rate for black Americans (14 per 1000 live births) is more than double that of white Americans (6 per 1000 live births), and that the US average equals that of Malaysia. (The US African-America infant mortality rate is worse than that of Uruguay.)

The report notes, "The United States leads the world in healthcare spending. On a per capita basis the United States spends twice the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average on healthcare, or 13% of national income. Yet some countries that spend substantially less than the United States have healthier populations. US public health indicators are marred by deep inequalities linked to income, health insurance coverage, race, ethnicity, geography and--critically--access to care." The report also notes that child poverty in the United States is on the rise. The UNDP defines child poverty as living in a family with an income below 50 percent. That strikes me as a rather wide definition. But the key thing is the trend, and the UN reports that more American children are living below this level than in recent years. Mexico, too, has seen such a rise (or fall). But England has cut back on the number of children living at this level by increasing tax credits and benefits for low-income people.

Recently, the US government reported a slight rise in the number of Americans living in poverty. Economists and statisticians do quibble over these stats, and, no doubt, it is hard to get a fix on precisely what qualifies as poverty. But, again, the trend matches the trend tacked by the UN. Moreover, one might ask, where are the indicators showing a decline in poverty? And as far as metaphors go, one need only look at the footage from NOLA.

The UN was not content to challenge the we're-number-one American mindset. It also took a whack at Bush's misadventure in Iraq with a report noting an increase in human rights abuses in Iraq. The report cites allegations of extra-judicial executions, reports of excessive use of force and mass detentions of people without warrants, and the displacement of populations in security operations. It notes, "corpses appear regularly in and around Baghdad and other areas. Most bear signs of torture and appear to be victims of extrajudicial executions," it said, noting incidents reported after arrests by "forces linked to the Ministry of Interior." Well, democracy takes a lot of hard work.
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SILENCE ON THE RIGHT? If Hillary Clinton's PAC were indicted for illegally accepting a $100,000 contribution, how loudly would Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ken Mehlman, and the other howlers of the right scream? Well, on Thursday, Tom Delay's Texans for a Republican Majority PAC was indicted for doing just that. Anyone hear anything?
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SMALL LIES LEAD TO..... Karl Rove resides in Washington. But he votes in Texas. How does he do that? He claims that he is still qualified to vote in the Lone Star state because he owns a 814 square foot rental cottage there and intends to live in this cottage after he leaves Washington. Responding to inquiries about Rove, Texas officials claim that such intent is good enough under state law. It probably isn't; they're obviously cutting Rove slack. But putting that aside, is it credible that the fellow who runs Bushworld and who now lives in a home valued at $1.1 million is truly planning to live in a $25,000 cottage when he departs the nation's capital? Such a lie--as minor as it may be--is symbolic, for it signals that Rove believes he can say anything, no matter how preposterous. He might end up in a ten-by-twenty-foot room after leaving the White House, but he ain't going to be clipping coupons in a podunk cottage. The watchdogs at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have called on the Texas director of elections to investigate whether Rove has illegally registered as a Texas voter. I wouldn't hold my breath for such an inquiry. But what a hoot if Rove were to be nabbed for voter fraud.

Posted by David Corn at September 9, 2005 11:37 AM