The Other Hurricane

In the wake of the unbelievable horror that unfolded in New Orleans over the past week (for those who haven't been following, the Katrina disaster area covering the American states of Louisiana, Mississipi and Alabama is the size of Great Britain), another insidious hurricane is sweeping the mighty Land Of The Free.

Hurricane Rove.

Oh the spinning! President Buffoon's number one political advisor Karl Rove (he's the one who leaked the name of a CIA agent to the American press in what is known as Plamegate, a federal crime by the way) is furiously staging his own little Category 5 spin. It’s no secret that Rove is the prime mover in any damage control exercise by the White House. The belated press statements by the federal government five full days after the hurricane struck New Orleans sought to tai-chi the blame away from its buffoony little shit of a president and squarely onto the already sagging shoulders of Louisiana’s Governor and the Mayor of New Orleans.

Consider this.

On the 24th of August 2005, a mere Tropical Storm Katrina was being observed heading for Florida. The tropical storm rapidly intensified to hurricane status as it approached.

On the 26th, the Governor of Louisana declared a state of emergency.

By the 27th, the national weather service run by the NOAA was warning that Katrina would strengthen in the next 24 hours and could become a category 4 hurricane. That same day, the Mayor of New Orleans called for voluntary evacuation of the city.

Buffoon Boy ordered the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA (both federal agencies), to prepare to co-ordinate “all disaster relief efforts” and to “provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures”. He then made a speech in Texas devoting 3 paragraphs out of 15 to the hurricane situation. The other 12 were about Iraq. Naturally.

On the 28th the Mayor ordered mandatory evacuation.

Hurricane Katrina made landfall on Monday, 29th August. Buffoon Boy continued his holiday on a ranch in Texas.

The next day, the levees that separate New Orleans from the Gulf of Mexico collapsed. Hello Gulf of Mexico.

On Wednesday, 80% of New Orleans was in the Gulf of Mexico, tens of thousands of people who had had nowhere else to go had been crammed into a leaking sports stadium for three whole days without electricity, water, food and working toilets. People were dying, drowning and (such is the shame of human nature) getting raped.

There was almost negligible National Guard (what to do, 1/3 of the Louisiana National Guard are in Iraq) or military presence. Meanwhile, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice watches a play on Broadway. She shops for Ferragamo shoes. The US Vice President, Dick Cheney, was on holiday in Wyoming. Buffoon Boy arrived in Washington in the evening, fresh from holiday. He made a speech about sending aid to New Orleans and broke out the kind of GRIN that cements confirmation that his genetic makeup is far closer to that of chimpanzees than the rest of ours.

On Thursday, the Mayor of New Orleans made a desperate SOS plea on national television.

On Friday, the President finally visited New Orleans. Two clean black teenagers were trotted up to be hugged by him. Only while the cameras were rolling, of course.

By Saturday, 3rd September, New Orleans was flooded, looted, lawless and, ironically, burning. People were waiting on balconies and roofs to be rescued. FIVE days after the hurricane struck. The journalists covering the disaster area were beginning to sound hysterical in their disbelief at how this could be happening in America.

I watched a live address by the FEMA director saying that the situation had been unforseeable. Whodathunk that those pesky levees would break! I guess he doesn’t read National Geographic, what more official budget reports requesting for funds to fortify the levees. He claimed that New Orleans was inaccessible due to the flooding (never mind that dozens of journalists had been on the ground, reporting live almost from day one) and, get this, that he hadn’t been aware until then that the situation in the city was so bad or that so many people were trapped in a powerless, waterless building amongst an increasing number of corpses. Whodathunkit??

The other federal agency caught with its pants down was that great patriot, the post-9/11 defender of America, the Department of Homeland Security. The Secretary of Homeland Security in a spectacular blind-eye turning to the earlier directive by the White House to coordinate all disaster relief efforts together with FEMA, said “the way that emergency operations act under the law is that the responsibility and the power, the authority, to order an evacuation rests with state and local officials. The federal government comes in and supports these officials”.

In obedient support of this line, the Washington Post (conveniently forgetting Plamegate) on 4th September cited an anonymous “senior Bush official” as saying that as at 3rd September, the Governor of Louisiana had yet to declare a state of emergency. Newsweek followed suit. Both implying that the delayed federal response was caused by the Governor’s supposed hesitation. The statement by the Washington Post had to be embarrasingly retracted hours later.

Hurricane Rove has begun spinning with all its might.