Hurricane Katrina, take 3

There's been a bit of a flap in the press over stories in Newsweek and the Washington Post over the weekend, citing that omniscient, nameless narrator news weeklies love and a "senior administration official," respectively and too reverentially, to the effect that following the inundation of New Orleans, Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco was slow and indecisive about declaring a "state of emergency," which would have allowed the feds to move in with massive amounts of money, supplies, and people. In fact, she had issued that declaration on Friday, August 26, 2005, three days before the storm hit. Bushy followed up on Saturday and Sunday--that's right, August 27 and 28--declaring a federal state of emergency in every area where the storm might hit.

Caught up in its slime, the Bushies changed their tune. White House spokesman Scott McClellan now boasts of Bushy's early action, while maintaining that people must ignore the inaction that followed.

But despite those declarations, help didn't come, day after day, until the cry of distress became an obscenity laced bellow from Mayor Ray Nagin and media reports that had already shocked the world finally seemed to penetrate the Bushies' isolation chamber.

Let's avoid the 'blame game,' say the Bushies, even while they continue to find other ways to slime local officials or the people who couldn't or wouldn't leave town, even while they try one spin after another. And here, it must be said that the press should either stop using anonymous sources from the Bushy Administration, on the grounds that they invariably lie, distort, or attempt to 'dis' someone else. Or, having discovered that they have been used for dishonorable purposes, reporters should out their sources. Journalists have no moral or ethical obligation to protect sources who hold the truth in contempt; rather, they are obliged to out them

The Bushies from the top down screwed up, and no amount of spin or lying or ducking responsibility or trying to pass the buck will change that. It's not that the emperor--excuse me, the president--has no clothes--I mean brain--and was fiddling--er, mountain biking and fishing--while Rome--New Orleans--burned--drowned; it's that, to put it as bluntly as possible, he doesn't care. Bushy lacks the power of empathy, which Bubba, by the way, had too much of...Bushy is wilfully ignorant and congenitally malign--a lethal combination--as New York City, Iraq, and New Orleans can attest.

The Bushies succeeded in obscuring the top Bushy's negligence in the run up to 9/11 and his perfidy in Iraq. They'll try again on New Orleans, and they have formidable resources. It will be up to the people who value truth to try once more to stop them and expose them to the full light of the sun.