No Time to Play Politics

Unless you're Karl Rove. First, from Salon's War Room:

As usual, however, the White House spin game is a little less than honest. The Washington Post reported on Sunday morning that a "senior Bush official" had complained that, as of Saturday, the governor of Louisiana -- who just happens to be a Democrat -- had not yet declared a state of emergency. Kathleen Blanco, meet Cindy Sheehan. Or Joseph Wilson. Or Paul O'Neill. Or John McCain. Only this time, the media is on to the game, at least belatedly. As Scott Rosenberg notes, Gov. Blanco did, in fact, declare a state of emergency. She did it on Aug. 26, when George W. Bush was on vacation. The Post has posted a correction.

Next, from the aforementioned Scott Rosenberg Salon blog:

This Washington Post piece included a charge, anonymously sourced to a "senior Bush official" -- did Karl Rove not learn his lesson from the Plame investigation? -- that the governor of Louisiana had failed to declare a state of emergency. But, of course, she had. The story now sits with a big fat correction on the Post's Web site. This is the old Rove-school tactic of planting a lie that, proverbially, can make it halfway round the world while the truth -- and the newspaper correction -- is still putting on its boots. But it's not just the president's men anonymously pointing fingers. Here's what the president himself had to say in his weekly radio address yesterday: "The magnitude of responding to a crisis over a disaster area that is larger than the size of Great Britain has created tremendous problems that have strained state and local capabilities. The result is that many of our citizens simply are not getting the help they need, especially in New Orleans. And that is unacceptable." Meanwhile, others in his administration are complaining about Louisiana's tardiness in reaching out for a "multi-state mutual aid pact" and suggesting that state and local authorities failed to take quick enough action to get the federal aid that, it's implied, Washington was just itching to send. I don't doubt that state and local officials made mistakes. And in due time we'll learn much more. But this disaster is epochal in scale; one reason we have a federal government in the first place is to deal with crises when their scale is simply too great for a state to handle. Instead of taking charge, the Bush administration botched its initial reaction -- and now, instead of accepting responsibility and focusing on helping the victims, its officials are covering their posteriors. The simple juxtaposition in the Post story's lead says it all: "Tens of thousands of people spent a fifth day awaiting evacuation from this ruined city, as Bush administration officials blamed state and local authorities for what leaders at all levels have called a failure of the country's emergency management." No one knows how many thousands are dead. A minimum of hundreds of thousands are homeless. And Bush and his men are passing the buck. It doesn't get much lower than this.

Have they no shame? Have they no sense of decency? It's time to stop giving them the Blues Brothers Pass:

Jake: No I didn't. Honest... I ran out of gas. I, I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake. A terrible flood. Locusts. IT WASN'T MY FAULT, I SWEAR TO GOD. [Elwood covers his head in anticipation of more gunfire, Jake removes his sunglasses to make a wordless appeal, and the Mystery Woman visibly softens] Mystery Woman: Oh, Jake... Jake, honey... [Jake embraces the Mystery Woman and they kiss]