“The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President.”

Yeah! Everyone knows wearing a suit in the White House will prevent you from letting the global economy collapse; a major American city from drowning; and not one but two wars from going disastrously down the toilet. Suit jackets symbolize the Constitution. You can eavesdrop on anyone you like while wearing a suit jacket. It’s like a sartorial warrant!

The idea that a key enabler of the most disastrous presidency since — to be charitable — Lyndon Johnson would dare reproach the sartorial habits of the Obama White House is absurdly self-parodic. What’s even more inexplicable is that the opinions of these men and women will continue to be solicited, out of some foolish social ritual about showing respect to the former inhabitants of the White House no matter how little respect they showed the country. The comparison Andy Card sets up from this frivolous little outburst writes itself: Bush was form; Obama is substance.

Hurricane Katrina victims take note. Michael Brown is safe.

A series of wind-whipped wildfires north of Boulder, Colo., have forced the evacuation of more than 11,500 residents — including Brown, the vilified ex-Federal Emergency Management Agency head.

Brown was lauded by President Bush for doing a “heckuva job” in the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, which took the lives of 1,836 people and caused more than $81 billion in damage. Brown resigned in disgrace and the event looms as a national turning point against the Bush administration.

This week, PBS’s “Frontline” broadcast a heart-wrenching investigative report, “The Old Man and the Storm,” about struggling post-Katrina rebuilding efforts more than three years after the massive hurricane destroyed much of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.

FEMA has promised to pay up to 75 percent of firefighting costs, according to a Daily Camera story.

The latest images and ground reports via Twitter can be found at twemes.com/boulderfire.

h/t Westword

Wendy Norris is a reporter for TWI’s sister site, The Colorado Independent. ]]> http://washingtonindependent.com/24440/ex-fema-head-michael-brown-evacuated-from-colorado-wildfire/feed 0 http://washingtonindependent.com/23614/what-the-bush-white-house-considers-exculpatory http://washingtonindependent.com/23614/what-the-bush-white-house-considers-exculpatory#comments Fri, 02 Jan 2009 18:06:44 +0000 Spencer Ackerman http://washingtonindependent.com/?p=23614 White House chief of staff Josh Bolten and national security adviser Steve Hadley somehow got it into their heads that insisting George W. Bush is a hands-on and pro-active leader is a wise legacy-building move.

This must be that famed strategery.

If Bush was an informed and judicious decision-maker then, the economy/Iraq/torture/Katrina/politicization of the Justice Department/you-know-the-litany are all entirely on his shoulders and not those of any aides. Well, all of that was on his shoulders anyway, but unlike most previous presidents, assigning culpability might have legal implications.

And here’s how Hadley deals with that new-found responsibility, from The Washington Post:

Hadley also gave little ground to criticism of the administration’s detention and interrogation policies, saying there is a balance to be struck between protecting the country and being transparent about what the government is doing to fight terrorism.

“I think the balance that you can strike now, after you have not been attacked for seven years, may be a little bit different than the balance that you would strike in the immediate year after the attack when you don’t know who the enemy is,” Hadley said. “You’ve got to be careful about that kind of second-guessing, because it’s hard to re-create the environment in which those decisions were made in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.”

Tell it to the judge.

Here are some highlights from Reuters’ highlights of the energy situation: All of U.S. Gulf of Mexico oil output has been shut down; about 95 percent of natural gas output has been shut, and 433,600 Louisiana residents have lost power as a result — 101,500 in evacuated areas, 332,600 in occupied areas.

Read the whole factbox.

In the sweltering heat, Palin received an enthusiastic greeting from an audience that the campaign said numbered more than 17,000, but was almost certainly considerably smaller. her speech was periodically interrupted by chants of “Sarah, Sarah,” and five audience members held up giant white letters that spelled “PALIN.” For the first time since McCain added her to his ticket, Palin sought to demonstrate that her experience in Alaska prepared her for the reponsibilities of the federal government. As Hurricane Gustav moved steadily toward New Orleans, three years to the week after Hurricane Katrina decimated the city, McCain and Palin paid a quick visit to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Operation Center in Jackson, Miss. yesterday, where they met with the governors of all four Gulf Coast states. Palin used this as a jumping off point.

I’d like to add my call also for every person and every family in danger to make a straight path toward safer ground. As governor of Alaska, I recently just signed a disaster declaration myself last month, when the people of the Fairbanks region, they faced the worst rainfall and flooding in decades, and when any governor calls for evacuation, these instructions need to be taken very seriously. To citizens in the Gulf Coast area, your lives and many others are in the balance, and the success of law enforcement, and of emergency workers, and our great National Guard, depends on your cooperation.

Palin’s remarks about the hurricane preparations were boilerplate, but her delivery was relentlessly upbeat. Even as she talked about the impending doom and gloom facing New Orleans, she spun just about everything she said in an optimistic light.

As we’ve seen in other disasters, crisis on this scale can bring out the best in our country. They show the resourcefulness, the resourcefulness of our people shine through, and the heroic kindness of which we are capable. And whatever the scale of destruction, grief, perhaps loss of life that this hurricane might inflict, people in the Gulf, that region will once again be counting on the good heart of America, Americans like all of you. I know that relief workers and charitable groups, and volunteers, they’ll be up to the task. So I join Sen. McCain in urging all of our fellow Americans to stand ready to help in the work and relief effort to rebuild. Some terrible days may lie ahead for New Orleans, again, and the region. But my fellow Americans, we’re going to get through this crisis, as we always do in our finest moments, by pulling together, and by helping where the need is greatest.

Palin’s speaking style is reminiscent of a friend’s impossibly cheery mother. It’s difficult to imagine her as an attack dog. Palin could provide relief from the near-constant negativity coming from the McCain campaign’s ads. In a reversal of the typical roles of running mates, McCain and the rest of his staff will be able to keep doing what they’ve done all along — launching broadsides against Sen. Barack Obama, while Palin can spread rays of sunshine throughout the battleground states where she will likely be spending the bulk of her time. If Palin largely refrains from going negative, it will make it all the more difficult for the Obama campaign to attack her without appearing to be “picking on the nice lady.” Palin can play the good cop, pushing her message of government reform and change to the masses, to the rest of the campaign’s bad cop.

The Sierra Club sent out a press release about one of those lessons — perhaps not the most important, but certainly one that finds relevance today. The environmental group points out that the Gulf Coast hurricane caused oil spills both on- and offshore, and urges supporters of offshore drilling to recognize the potential for future oil spills.

From the release:

New Orleans, LA: When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29 2005, millions of people suffered a tremendous loss. This tragedy was only compounded by incompetent government response both in the immediate aftermath of and in the long-term recovery from the historic storm.

In the three years since Katrina struck, numerous problems have surfaced related to government inaction and official misinformation ranging from the problem of formaldehyde in emergency housing, and now to myths about whether the hurricane really did cause any oil spills along the Gulf Coast.

As we reach the anniversary, our presidential candidates should be talking about ways to get our government working for people again. But John McCain and other supporters of more offshore drilling are trying to rewrite history and perversely use Katrina as evidence that drilling and oil spills aren’t threats.

Fact–Hurricanes Katrina and Rita Caused Oil Spills and damage to both off-shore rigs and on-shore infrastructure:

• More than 9,000,000 gallons of oil were spilled as a result of the two storms.
  (Source: U.S. Coast Guard)
• Hurricanes Katrina and Rita alone “totally destroyed” 113 offshore oil platforms. One platform drifted 66 nautical miles before running aground on a beach in Alabama. Hurricane Dennis in 2005 nearly destroyed the then brand-new, state-of-the-art $1-billion Shell Thunder Horse platform—the largest of its kind in the world.
  (Source: Minerals Management Service)

Yet at campaign events last month, Sen. John McCain said, “I would remind you that off the coast of Louisiana and Texas, they both had hurricanes that did not cause any real difficulties. So the environmental side of it I think is pretty well okay.” Two days later he said, “I’m aware that off the coast of Louisiana and Texas there are oil rigs, as we well know, and those rigs have survived very successfully the impacts of hurricanes, Hurricane Katrina as far as Louisiana is concerned.” (campaign events 7/15 and 7/18/08)

When I talked to the California-based conservation group the Surfrider Foundation for my story on offshore drilling last week, the spokesman Matt McClain said much the same thing that the Sierra Club release:

When Hurricane Katrina hit back in 2005, there was a lot of attention in New Orleans to all the devastation and destruction that took place on land, and rightfully so. But when that story was breaking, what didn’t get a lot of attention was that over 100 offshore drilling platforms were destroyed or damaged during the storm. And they spilled a significant amount of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It’s kind of funny, because the energy secretary, as recently as last month, got on the news and had said, “We didn’t lose one drop of oil.” Meanwhile, there are copious amounts of satellite imagery showing the spills taking place.

As McClain and other sources discuss in that story, such oil spills can do a lot more than look ugly. They can destroy ecosystems, kill off wildlife and shut down beaches — costing local businesses and the tourism industry a whole lot of money.