“This is your President!” Johnson announced. “I’m here to help you!”
Hurricane Betsy came ashore at Grand Isle, Louisiana, on the evening of Sept. 9, 1965. Like Hurricane Katrina would do 40 years later, the surge devastated New Orleans, flooding parts of the city, including the Lower Ninth Ward, for days.
One striking difference between Betsy and [...]

On the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall near New Orleans, all the ink was about the progress, and lack thereof, in restoring the city and the rest of the Gulf coast.
We live in an era of failed leadership. Corrupt and incompetent politicians. Thieving CEOs. Priests as pedophiles. Media monopolies. A president’s unpopular, intractable [...]

The 82nd’s Robert Stanley patrols the flooded streets of New Orleans in 2005. He was killed March 2007, in Samarra, Iraq.
Earlier this year, with recruitment tanking and its forces strapped down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army’s famed 82nd Airborne Division was forced to disband one of its best known missions, the “division ready brigade” [...]

As of 6:30 AM Pacific, Pres. Bush has still not responded to Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s request to declare a state of emergency in New Orleans in the wake of devastation caused by a tornado that ripped through area at around 3:00 AM Central Time Wednesday morning:
The F-2 tornado skipped across the region, hitting [...]

CNN just reported that the White House has admitted that Pres. Bush will avoid referring to the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts in the Gulf Coast.
From a political perspective, it is easy to see why. Pres. Bush’s direction of the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina was abysmal. It also marked the turning point in [...]

If Michael Brown is lying, he sure is good at it. Despite White House denials (by a third-tier spokesperson), Brown’s latest tidbits about the handling of Hurricane Katrina — and taking over Louisiana operations — sound awfully credible.
“Certain people in the White House were thinking we had to federalize Louisiana because she’s a white, female [...]

The Bush administration has eliminated hunger in America, and it was much easier than anyone suspected. They have simply quit using the word.
Yes, the folks who brought you “faith-based initiatives” instead of “lack of separation of church and state,” and “healthy forests” instead of “clear-cutting” are proud to present, “very low food security” instead of [...]

I can’t get the report about the guy who dismembered his girlfriend in New Orleans and then committed suicide out of my head.
I am a hundred percent in the personal responsibility camp but it seems, even to me, like this story is evidence of the very bad karma George Bush has loosed upon our country
After [...]

All of this fingerpointing ultimately leads to one conclusion: The Republicans are guilty, guilty, guilty.
In the aftermath of the Hurricane Katrina disaster last summer, one of the Republicans’ more successful tactics for deflecting responsibility for their own incompetence was to label any criticism as an attempt to “play the blame game.”
Hold fire until later, they [...]

Heckling Mr. Cheney: Remember the guy who, last fall in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, told Vice President Dick Cheney to perform an impossible sexual act on himself during a live television interview? He actually said it twice, if you recall. More recently, the same guy appeared on Chris Matthews’ “Hardball” show to “debate” Rockey [...]