Death in streets took a back seat to dinner

[chucK]

Talk about an attention-grabbing headline!

 

"Restaurants are getting busy," she said. "We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choise, followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you."

 

Talk about clueless.

 

linky

[ScottP]

"Clueless" invokes the idea that the guy didn't know what was going on. From what I got out of the article, Brown Eye and his staff had been informed in advance of that particular restaurant missive that the shit was going to hit the fan. "Selfish" is probably a better moniker.

 

On Aug. 31, (the first FEMA Official in New Orleans, Marty)Bahamonde e-mailed Brown (two days after the storm)to tell him that thousands of evacuees were gathering in the streets with no food or water and that "estimates are many will die within hours."

 

"Sir, I know that you know the situation is past critical," Bahamonde wrote. "The sooner we can get the medical patients out, the sooner we can get them out."

 

A short time (3 hours) later, Brown's press secretary, Sharon Worthy, wrote to colleagues, in an e-mail containing numerous misspellings, to complain that the FEMA director needed more time to eat dinner at a Baton Rouge restaurant that evening. "He needs much more that 20 or 30 minutes," Worthy wrote.

 

[chucK]

More juicy Michael Brown email:

 

"On Aug. 31, in response to a message detailing how people are being ``kicked out'' of New Orleans hotels and that food and water had run out at the Superdome, the city's primary shelter, Brown responded, ``Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?''"

 

link

[ScottP]

"FEMA is not going to hesitate at all in this storm. We are not going to sit back and make this a bureaucratic process. We are going to move fast, we are going to move quick, and we are going to do whatever it takes to help disaster victims." -FEMA Director Michael Brown, Aug. 28, 2005

 

"We just learned of the convention center – we being the federal government – today." –FEMA Director Michael Brown, to ABC's Ted Koppel, Sept. 1, 2005, to which Koppel responded: "Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today."

 

and others...

 

 

"Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" –House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX), to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 9, 2005

 

"I mean, you have people who don't heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving." –Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), Sept. 6, 2005

 

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." –Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal

 

"There are a lot of lessons we want to learn out of this process in terms of what works. I think we are in fact on our way to getting on top of the whole Katrina exercise." –Vice President Dick Cheney, Sept. 10, 2005

 

)"But I really didn't hear that at all today. People came up to me all day long and said 'God bless your son,' people of different races and it was very, very moving and touching, and they felt like when he flew over that it made all the difference in their lives, so I just don't hear that." –Former First Lady Barbara Bush to CNN's Larry King, after King asked her how she felt when people said that her son "doesn't care" about race, Sept. 5, 2005