Sick of Bush

Among the many distressing revelations concerning FEMA's weaknesses - despite years recently focusing on major threats - the Miami Sun-Sentinel presents the story of FEMA's extravagent waste:

The handling of aid to victims of Hurricane Katrina is only the latest in a series of missteps and fraud that has plagued this tax-funded government agency.
The Sun-Sentinel took a look at 20 recent disasters and found mismanagement and misallocation abound.

The Washington Post does a followup on FEMA incompetence in the aftermath of hurrican Katrina:

Three weeks after Hurricane Katrina struck, red tape and poor planning have left thousands of evacuees without basic services, according to local and state officials, public policy experts and survivors themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of people from New Orleans and Gulf Coast communities have fled, sometimes to neighboring states and beyond, moving in with friends and family or into shelters, public housing and hotels funded by the Red Cross. With little guidance from federal and state governments -- and no single person or entity in charge of the overall operation -- cities and counties have been left on their own to find survivors homes, schools, jobs and health care. A patchwork of policies has resulted, causing relief agencies to sometimes work at cross-purposes.

And CNN reports that lower level FEMA employees fault their boss's (mostly political appointees) lack of emergency management experience:

As Hurricane Katrina bore down on the Gulf Coast three weeks ago, veteran workers at the Federal Emergency Management Agency braced for an epic disaster.

But their bosses, political appointees with almost no emergency management experience, didn't seem to share the sense of urgency, a FEMA veteran said.

Among the notable "firsts" afforded by Katrina are:

1. an acceptance of responsibilty (sort of) by Bush for FEMA's bad response,

2. an actual resignation (by FEMA Director Brown) as a result of bad performance,

3. and repeated Rovian photo ops to try and recover the Bush myth.

Quite a show, but it doesn't seem to be working. Based on the latest poll numbers it seems that the only support Bush still has is his minimum base - and I suspect that will not hold for long. Maureen Dowd agrees.