Harold Meyerson:

We’re not number one. We’re not even close.

By which measures, precisely, do we lead the world? Caring for our countrymen? You jest. A first-class physical infrastructure? Tell that to New Orleans. Throwing so much money at the rich that we’ve got nothing left over to promote the general welfare? Now you’re talking.

The problem goes beyond the fact that we can’t count on our government to be there for us in catastrophes. It’s that a can’t-do spirit, a shouldn’t-do spirit, guides the men who run the nation. Consider the congressional testimony of Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign manager, who assumed the top position at FEMA in 2001. He characterized the organization as “an oversized entitlement program,” and counseled states and cities to rely instead on “faith-based organizations . . . like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service.”

Is it any surprise, then, that the administration’s response to the devastation in New Orleans is of a piece with its response to the sacking of Baghdad once our troops arrived? “Stuff happens” was the way Don Rumsfeld described the destruction of Baghdad’s hospitals, universities and museums while American soldiers stood around. Now stuff has happened in New Orleans, too, even as FEMA was turning away offers of assistance. This is the stuff-happens administration. And it’s willing, apparently, to sacrifice any claim America may have to national greatness rather than inconvenience the rich by taxing them to build a more secure nation.

Stuff happens, it’s true. Stuff foreseen and unforeseen, avoidable and unavoidable. It has always been so. “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

It’s not the stuff that happens to us that makes us who we are, for good or ill. No, it’s what we do when stuff happens — how we respond, or fail to respond. All the choices we make along the way. And neglect is not excused by saying “stuff happens.”

Shortly before the start of her son’s invasion of Iraq, former first lady Barbara Bush said:

Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it’s gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Oh, I mean, it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

Perhaps it was out of concern for the beautiful minds of civilians sitting comfortably back home that the Pentagon banned news photographs of coffins returning from Iraq. If so, it was very thoughtful of them.

It’s probably the same concern for all our beautiful minds that motivated FEMA’s attempt to block the news media from showing us any more dead bodies in New Orleans.

Washington Post writer Terry M. Neal doesn’t seem to appreciate FEMA’s great care to protect his beautiful mind:

Cadavers have a way of raising questions.

When people see them, they wonder, how did they get dead?

When a lot of people see a lot of dead bodies, politicians begin thinking of damage control.

Gosh, do you really suppose this policy is about protecting the Bush Administration? That bodies of Americans killed by government neglect aren’t testing well in Karl Rove’s focus groups?

Could it be that they don’t really care about my beautiful mind?

Via Crooks and Liars, Bob Harris looks at Bush’s Declaration of Emergency and doubts his own senses:

I checked the parish map against the White House’s own press release, posted on their own site. I have tried to figure out how this is my own mistake, but I can’t find it. And the results are frankly so bizarre I had to make the graphic in order to properly show you.

Welcome to upside-down-land: the areas at risk for Katrina were quite remarkably the areas not included in Bush’s declaration of emergency.

Larry Johnson:

While watching the MSNBC program, CONNECTED, COAST TO COAST with Ron Reagan, a man from the Evergreen Foundation was on air spinning the myth that the President had to “beg” the Governor of Louisiana to take action. Having been on this show several times I called one of the bookers, Susan Durrwatcher, to alert her to the fact that this man was misrepresenting what happened. I offered Susan the following objective, documented facts…. Susan thanked me for my “opinion” and said “we just have a different perspective”. Stunned, I asked her by what standard of journalism that an objective fact was mere opinion? I asked her to simply look at the documents and correct the record. She declined.

Think Progress has a Katrina Timeline.

This may be important as the Bush whitewash picks up steam.

Update: From Crook and Liars, Keith Olbermann’s video timeline.