Richard Dreyfuss, appearing on MSNBC to discuss the new documentary he narrates, America Betrayed, on Hurricane Katrina, the worst man-made disaster in American history, seized the opportunity in front of a cheering crowd of onlookers to blast George W. Bush and the Republican party for all the damage they have inflicted upon this country over the last 8 years.

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Dreyfuss: I don't think the Europeans have any confidence in our government. I think that the last eight years has destroyed two hundred years of respect and dedication. And I think we have been the point of meaning and admiration in the world for very specific reasons, and George Bush trashed it.

O’Donnell: So, you don't think that John McCain would be able to manage this government well, would have a different response than George Bush to a Hurricane Katrina?

Dreyfuss: I think the Republican party is corrupt through and through. And even the republicans like Buckley before he died said 'we should lose this election, go into the wilderness, and get cleansed', and I believe that's true. I think that they have been in office too long. I think that they are too adept at thievery, at moving the Constitution into places it never meant to go. I think that they have an extraordinary ability to divide rather than unite. And I think that I'm tired of being called a traitor, because I like my flag and I support the troops.

In what I must say seems to echo a theme similar to that of Naomi Kline's must-read book, Shock Doctrine, America Betrayed promises to go beyond Katrina and delve into the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 attacks, the war in Iraq, and offer "a long, hard look at how this country handles disaster, which ones they indirectly cause and how corporate America and their friends in the White House profit from those disasters in the long run."

Can't wait to see this one.

Reuters is speculating that, three years after Katrina highlighted Bush's who-gives-a-f*** attitude towards his poorest "subjects" (he was presenting a birthday cake to McCain) and brought the Third World to America, Hurricane Gustav could bring all those memories back just in time for the GOP's convention.

In the latest chapter of their campaign of contrasts, Barack Obama and John McCain are set to mark two very different milestones this week. On Thursday, Obama will accept his party's nomination on the 45th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s' "I Have a Dream" speech. But in an altogether different act of symbolism the next morning, John McCain will announce his running mate on his 72nd birthday. That date also just happens to be three years to the day President Bush presented McCain with a birthday cake in Arizona even as Hurricane Katrina slammed ashore in New Orleans.

In Denver, an estimated crowd of 75,000 people will fill Invesco Field on Thursday to hear Obama accept the Democratic presidential nomination. The symbolism of Obama, the first African-American nominee of a major American political party, harkening back to Dr. King's "fierce urgency of now" won't be lost on the convention delegates, some of whom saw King deliver his speech in Washington, DC on August 28th, 1963. (No doubt, that symbolism is lost on the National Review, which proclaimed "quite probable that King, were he alive today, would not vote for Barack Obama." John McCain's country club economics, dismal record on civil rights and consistent opposition to the creation of the Martin Luther King holiday itself suggest otherwise.)

That debate aside, McCain's image management problems begin in earnest the next day with his scheduled VP announcement in Dayton. McCain's decision to highlight his birth in 1936 can only resurrect the age issue, one which he has tried to laugh off by joking, "I am older than dirt, with more scars than Frankenstein." Whoever McCain picks - Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Rob Portman, Tom Ridge, Joe Lieberman or even Colin Powell - the timing is not without risks, to say the least.

And it only gets worse.

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On Sunday's Late Edition Rep, Roy Blunt (R-MO), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who reliably votes in favor of the Oil & Gas industry and against renewable energy bills and has been rewarded in return, joined the month-long chorus of Republicans including McCain that have been making the demonstrably false claim that there weren’t any major spills caused by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

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Blunt: If there was ever a test of this system it's in the one place that we do drill which is the gulf - 4,000 platforms in the gulf - thank God we've got them. 238 of them were injured by either Katrina or Rita. There was really no oil loss of any appreciable kind at any of those. Less oil was lost than used to seep up out of the gulf floor."

In fact, as we continue to note each time a new version of this claim has been made, there were at least 124 oil spills as a result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The website Skytruth.org even has posted satellite images of the spills as seen from space. Blunt added to his false assertion a repeat of what must be the new talking point on this issue that was offered on Thursday by McCain’s policy adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer (an energy lobbyist) after she was called out by MSNBC's David Schuster after trying to claim that "hurricanes Rita and Katrina and did not spill a drop” of oil, a downplaying of the spills by comparing them to the amount of oil that naturally seeps into the ocean floor.

As ThinkProgress notes, “the effects of seeps and spills differ hugely” in their environmental impact. It's an apples and oranges comparison, as seeps are natural, thus not preventable, and they have very little adverse ecological impact due to the fact that they result in a much lower rate of release over time over a larger area, while the effects of spills on the surface can be devastating.

Rep. Blunt also attacked Speaker Pelosi's calling for a release of 10% of the oil in the strategic oil reserve and her pointing out many of the same facts I had written about a month ago that the oil industry has yet drilled in just 19 percent of the more than 40 million acres they already can that are not covered by the current ban — 40 million acres that represent 79 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore oil reserves. Using generous estimates from the latest analysis from Bush’s own Department of Energy, allowing for unlimited drilling both offshore and in ANWR “would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents" a gal. by 2025.

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For a while, Republicans were defending their call for coastal drilling by claiming that the Chinese were drilling in Cuban waters. This proved to be false (though many on the right repeat the claim anyway).

So, conservatives have moved onto a new talking point: coastal drilling is safe for the environment, because recent hurricanes didn’t lead to oil spills. It leads to rhetoric like this from Nancy Pfotenhauer, John McCain’s senior energy adviser, who appeared on MSNBC the other day.

John McCain made the same claim a month ago: “As for offshore drilling, it’s safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ken.) said the same thing over the weekend: “I think people are reassured that not a drop of oil was spilled during Katrina or Rita. Those rigs in the Gulf, there was not a single incident of spillage that anyone reported.”

Bill O’Reilly is sticking to the Republican script, telling his radio audience the other day, “Remember when Katrina hit, none of the oil rigs spilled in Louisiana.”

Even Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R), who presumably would know better, told Fox News a couple of weeks ago, “[T]hat’s one of the great unwritten success stories, after Katrina and Rita, these awful storms, no major spills.”

George Will, Dick Morris, Robert Samuelson, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page have all repeated the claim.

And they’re all wrong.

  This week, Americans were introduced to Wrong-Way McCain. To be sure, it's the same John McCain ("McSame") who would continue the policies of George W. Bush that 80% of Americans believe have put the country on the wrong track. It's also the same "Jukebox John" who has changed his tune 61 times on issues foreign and domestic, including a dizzying 10 times in two weeks back in June. But as he showed repeatedly over the past several days, Wrong-Way McCain is also the Republican presidential nominee who simply can't keep his stories straight.

Whether the result of crass political opportunism, transparent deceit or just plain confusion, on at least 7 occasions this week alone, Wrong Way McCain couldn't remember what he stood for, if anything at all.

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In a segment ending with the disclosure that "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace is brought to you by "The People of America's Oil and Natural Gas Industry" and immediately followed by the American Petroleum Institute (API) front group's misleading ad, the Fox News host seized on one of John McCain's more recent flip-flops siding with President Bush's recent call to rescind the ban on offshore oil drilling and asked over and over why McCain won't cave all the way to big oil and also allow for oil exploration in the Alaskan Arctic Wildlife Refuge, ANWR.

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In the process of spewing talking points on behalf of his show's sponsor, Wallace brings Obama into the discussion by joining the growing list of conservative dittoheads in the media who have been repeating this same false claim made by McCain last Tues. about oil spills and Hurricane Katrina:

Wallace: Obama talks about environmental damage from drilling offshore but the fact is the moratorium was put into effect in 1981. There's been a lot of technological advances since then. We had Hurricane Katrina go through the heart of the Gulf of Mexico and ravage these oil rigs and there were almost no oil spills, so what's he talking about?"

As ThinkProgress points out, that's not true at all.

The truth is that Hurricane Katrina caused oil spillage so significant it was clearly visible from space. It also wreaked environmental havoc near the scale of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. ...

As Sen Reid correctly pointed out, this recent push by George Bush & John McBush represents "nothing more than a cynical campaign ploy that will do nothing to lower energy prices, and represents another big giveaway to oil companies already making billions in profits." and the NYT went further to note that "the only real beneficiaries will be the oil companies that are trying to lock up every last acre of public land before their friends in power -- Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney -- exit the political stage."

In fact, the oil industry has yet drilled in just 19 percent of the more than 40 million acres they already can that are not covered by the current ban -- 40 million acres that represent 79 percent of America’s technically recoverable offshore oil reserves. Using generous estimates from the latest analysis from Bush's own Department of Energy, allowing for unlimited drilling both offshore and in ANWR "would lower the price at the pump by less than 6 cents by 2025."

How much do you reckon a gallon of gas will be in 2025, with or without the hypothetical $0.06 a gal. savings?

In his eternal quest for the Republican presidential nomination, the supposed maverick John McCain has repeatedly reversed long-held positions and compromised purportedly core principles. From the Bush tax cuts, the religious right and immigration reform to overturning Roe v. Wade, proclaiming Samuel Alito a model Supreme Court Justice and bashing France (just to name a few), McCain changed sides as changing political conditions dictated.

But over the past two weeks, McCain's rapid fire, acrobatic flip-flops have produced whiplash, at least for voters. 10 times since the beginning of June, McCain has retreated from, upended or just forgotten positions he once claimed as his own. On Social Security, balancing the budget, defense spending, domestic surveillance and a host of other issues so far this month, McCain's "Straight Talk Express" did a U-turn on the road to the White House.

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Karl Rove's role in building, running and ruining the most corrupt, inept and politically polarizing presidential administration in U.S. history, is the stuff of legends. The below excerpts from Paul Alexander's new book, "Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise And Fall Of Karl Rove", gives a stunning picture of how Rove, within hours of Hurricane Katrina making landfall, put his political machine to work protecting George Bush, his administration and their Republican allies in the Gulf Coast region, by smearing both New Orlenas Mayor, Ray Nagin and Louisiana Governor, Kathleen Blanco.

With Karl Rove neutered and disgraced, Alexander found that people (politicians) directly involved in the disaster were finally willing to speak openly about the immoral, disgraceful and unforgivably political nature of the Bush Administration's handling of one the worst natural disasters ever to strike the United States -- and was widely viewed as a seminal moment in the downward spiral of George Bush, Karl Rove and the Republican party, from which they never recovered. Excerpts from Salon:

On Monday, August 29, 2005, at about 6:00 a.m., Hurricane Katrina slammed into the coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. A category 5 hurricane until just before landfall, it was one of the worst storms ever to hit the Gulf Coast. Kathleen Blanco, the governor of Louisiana, had been briefed extensively about what to expect when the storm hit, which was why, on the Friday night before the storm reached the coast, she signed papers declaring Louisiana to be in a state of emergency. Based on what she had been told by her advisers and what she knew from being a native Louisianan, she understood that Katrina, creeping gradually toward land with sustained winds of a strength rarely seen in a hurricane, could prove to be catastrophic for Louisiana, and particularly for New Orleans.

If Bush had not seen what was taking place by Tuesday, Karl Rove had. The first evidence of Rove's involvement in the Katrina disaster occurred on Tuesday afternoon. "Rove understood what a nightmare this was for the president," Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana says, "so he went into high gear on the spin thing they're so good at in the White House. Rove had David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana. I was at a press conference and David Vitter walked up to the mike and said, 'I just got off the phone with Karl Rove.' I looked at the governor and she looked at me, like, 'Why is David Vitter on the phone with Karl Rove?' I mean, he could have been talking to generals, the president himself, but Rove is just a political hatchet man."

"I could not believe that the president of the United States, staged by Karl Rove himself, had come down to the city of New Orleans and basically put up a stage prop. It was like you had gone to a studio in California and filmed a movie. They put the props up and the minute we were gone they took them down. All the dump trucks were gone. All the Coast Guard people were gone. It was an empty spot with one little crane. It was the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. At that moment I knew what was going on and I've been a changed woman ever since. It truly changed my life." Read on...

Unlike last month's photo-op where the media let him get away with his make-believe Katrina record, Maya Rodriguez with the New Orleans CBS affiliate news brought a dose of reality to McCain's town hall in Baton Rouge on Wednesday:

Rodriguez: Senator, my understanding is you have voted twice against the creation of commission to investigate the levee failures around New Orleans, and my question is: Why have you voted against that creation of that commission?

McCain: I've supported every investigation and ways of finding out what caused the tragedy. I've been here to New Orleans. I've met with people on the ground. I've met with the Governor. I'm not familiar with exactly what you said but I've been as active as anybody in efforts to restore the city. ...

Despite his claims otherwise, the reporter was correct, and McCain's record on Katrina is not at all what he would have you believe.

• McCain Voted Twice Against Establishing A Commission To Study The Response To Hurricane Katrina. [ 9/14/2005, 2/2/2006]
• McCain Opposed Granting Financial Relief To Those Affected By Hurricane Katrina. [9/15/2005]
• McCain Voted Against Five Months of Medicaid For Hurricane Katrina Victims. [11/3/2005]
• McCain Voted Against Emergency Funding Bill, Including $28 Billion for Hurricane Relief. [5/4/2006]

And as for McCain's: “I’ve been here to New Orleans. I’ve met with people on the ground,” ThinkProgress notes that "until traveling there one month ago, McCain had “made just one public tour of New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina touched down in August 2005.”"

The truth is, until Bobby Jindal won the Louisiana Governor's race in Oct. and McCain began trying to remake his Katrina image out of pixie dust and media complacency, his gulf coast record hadn't changed much since the day the hurricane made landfall.

McCain Then and Now:

On Thursday, John McCain toured areas of New Orleans that are still damaged from Hurricane Katrina and tried to explain how he would have done things differently had he been President.

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John McCain: Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled. Never again.

Dana Bash: John McCain used these vivid reminders of a stained Bush legacy to try to distance himself. President Bush famously flew over New Orleans in the days after Katrina, a mistake McCain said he would not have made.

John McCain: In all candor if I had been President of the United States I'd have ordered the plane landed at the nearest Air Force base and I'd have been over here.

Yep, John McCain would have hopped off of that plane and done what exactly? He didn't say, so we're left to guess whether he would have used Air Force One to rescue evacuees (and if so, why didn't he hop on his private jet and do so at the time? just sayin') or is it more likely he would have simply held a photo-op presser like he did yesterday and the day Hurricane Katrina hit.

Now, I guess it's asking a lot to let something like Katrina spoil his birthday plans, but if he really would have done things so differently had he been President, honestly, then why didn't he at least say something along the lines of: 'I'm flattered you still thought enough to come, Mr. President, but don't you have something more important you should be attending to?' and wouldn't he at least have exercised better judgment than to participate in a laugh-filled photo-op with the President for the historical record that fateful day?

Despite all the talk at yesterday's campaign photo-op, John McCain's actions then and since could not be more stark in contrast:

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Keeping track of the Bush scandals so we don't have to, Keith Olbermann updates some truly egregious violations of decency on the part of the Bush administration:

First up is Jamie Leigh Jones, the KBR employee who accused her company and the federal government of covering up the gang rape she suffered at the hands of her co-workers in Iraq.   Tuesday, it was announced that the Pentagon has declined to investigate further.  Because, you know, that would mean accountability and justice, and we can't have any of that under BushCo, can we?

And then there is news report that a federal judge has denied the request of 11 Yemeni detainees to investigate the CIA's destruction of waterboarding tapes, saying that he trusts that the Justice Department will do a full and complete investigation---of themselves.  Um, yeah.  Has this judge not been paying attention for the last 7 years?

And finally, Olbermann tallies the total amount of damages asserted against the US Army of Engineers for the Katrina disaster.  And you thought that the occupation in Iraq was a black hole of off-budget expenditures.  Get a load of this number:

$3,014, 170, 389, 176,410 But to be fair:

The corps, which constructed the levee system overwhelmed during Hurricane Katrina, received 247 claims and faces nearly 500,000 more for damages and deaths that occurred in the hurricane's aftermath, USA Today reported Monday.

One personal injury claim seeks $3 quadrillion, about 250 times the U.S. gross domestic product, and another resident in the heavily damaged New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward is seeking $6 trillion.

 

From Advancement Project, watch the video: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

If you read The Shock Doctrine, this news comes as no surprise.  HUD/HANO has been itching to destroy the public housing in New Orleans since Katrina hit.  It looks like in mid-December 15th, they are slated for demolition:

On the 12th day before Christmas, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to unleash teams of bulldozers to demolish thousands of low-income apartments in New Orleans. Despite Katrina causing the worst affordable housing crisis since the Civil War, HUD is spending $762 million in taxpayer funds to tear down over 4600 public housing subsidized apartments and replace them with 744 similarly subsidized units--an 82% reduction. HUD is in charge and a one person HUD employee makes all the local housing authority decisions. HUD took over the local housing authority years ago--all decisions are made in Washington DC. HUD plans to build an additional 1000 market rate and tax credit units--which will still result in a net loss of 2700 apartments to New Orleans--the remaining new apartments will cost an average cost of over $400,000 each!

Affordable housing is at a critical point along the Gulf Coast. Over 50,000 families still living in tiny FEMA trailers are being systematically forced out. Over 90,000 homeowners in Louisiana are still waiting to receive federal recovery funds from the Road Home. In New Orleans, hundreds of the estimated 12,000 homeless have taken up residence in small tents across the street from City Hall and under the I-10.

What a lovely Christmas gift to give those who can least afford it.  And we'll still call ourselves the richest country in the world. 

In conjunction with Human Rights Day on December 10th, a variety of concerned groups will come together to resist the demolition of public housing in New Orleans.  They need your help.

Lots of information and resources available at Advancement Project.  

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There are still 50,000 families forced to live in FEMA trailers ever since Hurricane Katrina. Trailers in which the levels of formaldehyde present in the air are so high, CBS has obtained emails that indicate the agency is prohibiting its employees from even briefly stepping inside them, and despite agency claims "that it is still working on the formaldehyde problem," it isn't.

In July the head of the agency told Congress he was working quickly to deal with the toxic formaldehyde issue.

"FEMA and the CDC are scheduled to begin Phase One of a study in the Gulf Coast within the next few weeks," said FEMA Administrator R. David Paulison.
Now FEMA says the study has been halted - not a single trailer tested.

The stated reason: the agency says it needs to identify "action levels for responding to the results."

In other words, when FEMA finds high levels of the toxic fumes, the agency still doesn't know what to do about it.

Sadly, this is exactly what we can expect as long as the party that doesn't believe in government is heading our government. Ever since Ronald Reagan's inaugural speech when he declared "Government isn't the solution; it is the problem," Republicans could hardly have done more to make sure it is the case.

  At this point, it's obvious that the government's response to Katrina was pathetic, and the response to the wildfires has been competent, though as Dan Froomkin noted yesterday, “[D]espite all the forceful pronouncements from the White House, it’s not clear that Bush deserves much, if any, of the credit. And there’s no indication that his visit will expiate the Katrina legacy, arguably the second most defining aspect of his presidency.”

But that apparently hasn’t stopped Bush from taking a cheap shot.

“There is no hill he’s not willing to charge, no problem he’s not willing to solve,” Bush said of the California governor. “It makes a significant difference when you have somebody in the statehouse willing to take the lead.”

Unlike, say, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who was faulted perhaps as much as the Federal Emergency Management Agency was for inadequate preparation and response for Hurricane Katrina’s assault on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast?

You think? Two years later, and the president is still trying pass the buck.

For her part, Blanco said in a press statement that it took federal forces nearly a week to arrive in Louisiana after the storm. “I was the only game in town, leading for nearly a week without the president’s help,” Blanco said. “Of all the lessons learned from Katrina now being put into place in California, I would hope the one he would remember is that politics has no place in any disaster.”

So much for that idea.