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By Andy Borowitz
$16.95
By Nicholson Baker
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AP/Gerald Herbert
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Five ex-officers from the New Orleans Police Department found themselves on the other side of the law Wednesday, as they were sentenced to jail for their respective roles in the shootings of six unarmed civilians in the wake of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005.
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Wikimedia Commons / Seher Sikandar for rehes creative (CC-BY-SA)
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He’s certainly been rehearsing for this role for years (remember his post-Katrina floating photo op?), and now Sean Penn has an honest-to-goodness new post as the ambassador at large to Haiti, as of a special ceremony held in his honor last weekend.
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Flickr / gemapublicaffairs (CC-BY)
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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has halted rebuilding projects dating to Hurricane Katrina and has opted to pay for only the “immediate needs” of disaster-torn communities as funding for the agency dries up.
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Flickr / kallao
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With Hurricane Irene fixing to beat up much of the American Mid-Atlantic, now may be a good time to examine the legacy of Hurricane Katrina and U.S. “government bungling” for many of the still-stunned inhabitants of New Orleans. (more)
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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In an event that pretty much defines the lawlessness and racial tension that existed in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, five current or former policemen are on trial for murder after the officers allegedly shot, burned and then shot again resident Henry Glover.
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During his comfortable sit-down with Matt Lauer on Wednesday’s “Today” show, former President George W. Bush was visited by the pre-taped image of a contrite Kanye West, who was all ready to make nice after his Bush-is-a-racist claim of yesteryear.
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Wikimedia Commons
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As Labor Day weekend draws near, for Americans on the East Coast so does a Category 4 hurricane by the folksy name of Earl. Good people of North Carolina, you’re on notice.
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White House
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The president paid his respects to the people of New Orleans on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina by recognizing their perseverance and determination “to rebuild in the face of ruin.” Full remarks follow the jump.
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A shocking spate of killings in the wake of Hurricane Katrina still haunts New Orleans and shakes the locals’ sense of security, owing to the fact that the five people who died within the span of one week were civilians, four were unarmed ... (continued)
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AP / shakil Adil
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Pakistan’s extraordinarily unfortunate season of flooding has left at least 1,600 people dead and 2 million homeless, and now the Pakistani government’s poor response to the disaster has led to threats of social unrest and military takeover.
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Flickr / Digital Sextant (CC-BY)
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Four police officers have been indicted on charges related to the fatal shootings that took place on the Danzinger bridge days after Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans. Two civilians were killed and four others wounded in the incident. If convicted, the officers could receive the death penalty.
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By Joe Conason — Clearly the president understands what is at stake. And he apparently senses renewed opportunity in the wake of the Gulf catastrophe, which illustrates the problems of oil dependency with harrowing urgency.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — The simple truth is that the most important issue facing the nation is not the oil spill, however horrific its effects will be, but the economy.
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By Eugene Robinson — Adm. Thad Allen is an expert on thankless jobs. After the initial response to Hurricane Katrina had been botched, President Bush assigned him to clean up the mess. Now President Obama has put him in charge of handling the worst oil spill in the nation’s history.
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AP / Evan Vucci
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Following a news conference Thursday in which he voiced resolve and regret over the way the Gulf oil spill has been handled, President Barack Obama visited the Louisiana coast on Friday to see the environmental devastation firsthand and to survey efforts to plug the Deepwater Horizon undersea gusher.
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NASA
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Since oil began leaking into the Gulf of Mexico more than a month ago, the U.S. government and oil giant BP have been engaged in a marriage of convenience that has left the public—and public commentators—furious at both. (continued)
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youtube.com
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Ever at the ready to undermine the authority of our socialist president, the GOP’s biggest and baddest yammerer, Rush Limbaugh, and some of his like-minded friends jumped on the opportunity to repurpose the Gulf Coast oil spill, rhetorically transforming the eco-corporate disaster ... (continued)
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acorn.org
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ACORN is closing up shop. On Monday, the national community organizing network announced that it would be winding down its operations and planned to shutter its “remaining state affiliates and field offices” by April 1.
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Flickr / The Doodler
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By Eugene Robinson — FEMA is selling more than 100,000 contaminated trailers and mobile homes that are toxic enough to make people very sick.
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RJ Matson, The St. Louis Post Dispatch —
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Four years after Katrina, New Orleans struggles against the odds to preserve its unruly spirit through its unique musical legacy.
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Flickr / Corey Ann
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ProPublica, Frontline and the New Orleans Times-Picayune are investigating the rash of police shootings after Hurricane Katrina—in one week, police killed and wounded as many as they do in a typical year—and the results are troubling. (continued)
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flickr.com
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Washington, D.C., has the highest rate of AIDS in the country, and millions of federal dollars are spent trying to alleviate it. But a new investigative piece uncovers a corrupt system where books were cooked, corners cut, and $400,000 lost to a nonprofit launched by the leader of a cocaine ring.
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The folks at Fox News are outraged after seeing a clip of some New Jersey school kids singing President Obama’s praises and have handily spun the story into yet another sign of the Obama administration’s relentless indoctrination of unsuspecting Americans everywhere. Problem is, there’s similar footage to be found of schoolchildren doing the same for George W. Bush.
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Why are New Orleanians—along with people from all over the world who continue to flock there—so devoted to a place that was, even before the storm, the most corrupt, impoverished and violent corner of America? “Nine Lives” by Dan Baum helps provide an answer.
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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Mayhem ensued Thursday when actor Brad Pitt visited Capitol Hill to meet with President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about rebuilding New Orleans. An anonymous Senate source told the AP that Pitt was possessed of a “nice face” but was “waaaay too skinny.” These politicians need to get their stuff together.
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Tab, The Calgary Sun —
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By Marie Cocco — George W. Bush promised to restore “honor and dignity” to the White House, but he leaves with less honor and with lower public approval than any other president since Richard Nixon.
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By Eugene Robinson — In his eyes, there’s “no such thing as short-term history.” It’s true that some presidencies look different after a few decades. But it’s also true that presidential acts can have immediate consequences—and Bush’s eight years are seen as a nadir that will take years to recover from.
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abc.go.com
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By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting —
The inaugural episode of ABC’s newest reality television series did exactly as producer Arnold Shapiro told viewers it would: unabashedly celebrated the Department of Homeland Security. It also failed in every conceivable way to critically examine the largest reorganization of the federal government since World War II.
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By Ellen Goodman — The 43rd president is going home with less remorse and fewer regrets than my grandchildren express for spilling their cereal.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Chris Hedges — We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes.
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White House / Eric Draper
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Putting a positive spin on George W. Bush’s two terms in office is no easy feat, which is why the White House has sent out a two-page memo detailing the president’s numerous achievements, including his protection of “the honor and the dignity of his office,” whatever that means.
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By Marie Cocco — It was nothing Bush did—no decision he made, no policy he pursued, no faith that he placed in ideological dogma—that he finds regrettable. Bush told a cable network, “I regret saying some things I shouldn’t have said” over the course of eight tumultuous years.
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By Marie Cocco — So this is how the “ownership society” works. We own all the bad stuff.
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White House / Eric Draper
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How would the president rate the government’s response to Hurricane Gustav? In a word: “Excellent.” Eager to escape the shadow of Katrina, which has come to symbolize the incompetence of his administration, Hurricane George made landfall in Louisiana Wednesday for some hands-on disaster relief.
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As it turned out, New Orleans dodged the full brunt of Hurricane Gustav, which had substantially weakened by the time it reached the Louisiana shoreline on Monday, but Hurricane Hanna still looms as a potential threat to the nation’s East Coast.
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AP photo / Stephan Savoia
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Many Republicans who originally planned to spend Monday in St. Paul with other Republican National Convention-goers were compelled to change their plans, thanks to Hurricane Gustav—including the GOP’s own presumptive presidential nominee, John McCain, who was busy over the weekend playing the anti-Bush when it came to disaster preparedness.
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AP photo / Rob Carr
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New Orleans residents began fleeing the city this weekend in preparation for Hurricane Gustav to hit the Louisiana coast just three years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin underscored the severity of the situation, telling locals they had to evacuate starting at 8 a.m. Sunday but would be wise to start earlier.
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AP photo / Matt Sayles
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In what was perhaps the most highly anticipated (and no doubt the most highly scrutinized) moment of his political career thus far, newly nominated Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was saddled with a huge task Thursday night, but by the end, Obama had both thrown down the gauntlet and risen to the occasion—at least in the eyes of thousands of supporters who came to see his history-making acceptance speech at Denver’s Invesco Field.
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independent.com
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Critics and challengers of Naomi Klein’s work had better take a close look at her latest book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” before launching their attacks. This is one writer whose research and documentation are so exhaustive that would-be detractors will not only find her analysis to be dauntingly watertight, even if they don’t share her views about the unnatural disasters enabled by free-market capitalism, but they might also discover that some of her source material seems strangely familiar.
Transcript available here.
Posted on Jun 30, 2008
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independent.com
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By Kasia Anderson — Critics and challengers of Naomi Klein’s work had better take a close look at her latest book, “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism,” before launching their attacks.
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By Amy Goodman — While the TV meteorologists document “extreme weather” with their increasingly sophisticated toolbox, from Doppler radar to 3-D animated maps, the two words rarely uttered are its cause: global warming.
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Truthdig / Larry Blumenfeld
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By Larry Blumenfeld — It’s easy in New Orleans these days to read meaning and purpose into every lyric or song choice—was Sheryl Crow commenting on the housing crisis by covering “Gimme Shelter,” or was she just doing a Stones tune? Also, it’s impossible to take in all the music and all the messages emanating from the Jazz Fest’s 10 stages. Still, a good deal of what I did catch was timely, topical and worth remembering.
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AP photo / Wang Jiaowen, ColorChinaPhoto
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Americans apparently have a track record of opening their wallets to assist those in need after natural disasters at home and abroad. That was the case, at least, after the 2004 tsunami in Asia and Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. in 2005. But the picture looks different in the wake of the recent cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in China, leaving international trend-watchers asking: What gives?
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Flickr / VictoryNH
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With the nomination well in hand, John McCain has at last rejected the endorsement of pastor John Hagee, who once suggested that the Holocaust was a case of divine providence. McCain stood by Hagee in the past, when the minister’s incendiary remarks about Catholicism and the supposedly divine cause of Hurricane Katrina first came to light.
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By Eugene Robinson — The Reagan era in American politics is about to end, and we have George W. Bush to thank for its demise.
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AP photo / Jamie-Andrea Yanak
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By Robert Scheer — Would God ever damn America? Is there anything we have done or could do as a nation that might court such severe judgment from an almighty, or is there a peculiar American exemption from God’s wrath? The prediction of God’s damnation for bad behavior is made in both black and white churches.
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A sharp jump in the number of Americans filing for unemployment has brought the four-week average to its highest level since the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Last week, 378,000 new claims were filed. Roughly 2.8 million workers currently receive unemployment benefits.
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By Larry Blumenfeld — Ned Sublette’s remarkable new book tells an inspiring story of resilience and resistance by ordinary men and women who won’t cooperate in their own erasure.
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