Getting Fingered (and Not in a Pleasant Way)

Looks like the White House, Louisiana and New Orleans officials are indulging in more finger-waving than a Wendy's bowl of chili (yeah, yeah, it's a dated and awkward reference -- so sue me). With the Bush Administration tsk-tsking Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and her aides, in turn, assailing the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin weighs in.

On "Meet the Press," Nagin offered an olive branch to Dumbya but offered a middle finger to Blanco. Proving himself the quintessential anti-statesman, the mayor told Tim Russert:

NAGIN: ... My interactions with the president is, anytime I talked with him and gave him what the real deal was and gave him the truth, he acted and he made things happen.

RUSSERT: How about the governor?

NAGIN: Well, you know, I don't know about that one. We fought and held that city together with only 200 state National Guard. That was it. We did not get a lot of other support for three or four days of pure hell on Earth. There were resources that were sitting in other parishes. I just don't know. I mean, and then when a group did come down to review what was happening in New Orleans, it was a big media event. It was followed with cameras and with AP reporters, a little helicopter flyover, and then they had a press conference and it was gone. So I don't have much else to say about that.

Ouch.

It is becoming increasingly evident that almost every single government official with a desk and a laptop, almost every step of the way, shares culpability for the deadly fiasco that followed Hurricane Katrina.

That includes a mayor who failed to follow the city's own evacuation plan and ensure buses for more than 127,000 residents without transportation.

That includes a governor who apparently panicked and failed to sufficiently tell federal authorities what her state needed.

That includes a president who had whittled away FEMA's ability to respond to natural disaster and provided conflicting signals about what the feds would be doing to assist.

As The New York Times meticulously notes in an excellent wrap-up on the tumbling dominos, this tragedy was one of those rare instances of political bipartisanship. It was a full-fledged case of bipartisan fuck-up. Chalk one up for bureaucracy.

Joe over at The Moderate Voice, incidentally, has a terrific summary of the post-Katrina breakdown.