The Dubya Culpa

Of Horselawyer Brown.

First, an article that should piss us all roundly off.

Then, afterwards, I bastardize poor Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

From the NYT:

Brown Asserts He Alerted White House Quickly on Katrina

By JOHN O'NEIL
and MARIA NEWMAN

Michael D. Brown, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, testified today that he let senior White House staffers know as soon as he had heard that flooding had begun in New Orleans on the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall.

Mr. Brown also called claims by top officials at the Department of Homeland Security that they weren't aware of levee breaches until the next day " just baloney."

Mr. Brown said that homeland security officials were being regularly updated by reports delivered through video conference calls, and that he personally contacted White House officials.

"My obligation was to the White House and to make sure the president knows what's going on," he said, "and I did that."
Later in the day, however, two top officials with the Department of Homeland Security testified that it was Mr. Brown's refusal to accept that his agency reported to them, and not directly to the White House, that prevented critical information about the disaster's urgency from flowing to the correct people quickly enough.

…
Mr. Brown's testimony provided the first detailed look into communications between emergency management officials and the White House. He testified that the White House counsel, Harriet Miers, had written him on Thursday asking him to respect the confidentiality of conversations with presidential advisers.
But Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, directed him to answer questions on those conversations, saying that the White House had declined her invitation on Thursday night to make a claim of executive privilege.
…
Mr. Brown said that he had e-mailed Mr. Card on the 29th to tell him that "this was the big one."And later that evening, Mr. Brown said, he gave a fuller account of the problems in a call to Mr. Hagin, who was with President Bush. Mr. Bush was in San Diego at the time.

"I think I told him that we were realizing our worst nightmare, that everything we had planned about, worried about, that FEMA, frankly, had worried about for 10 years, was coming true," he said.

Mr. Brown said he might have spoken briefly to Mr. Bush on the night of the 29th, but was not sure.

"I knew that in speaking to Joe I was talking directly to the president," he said.
Before the hurricane, Mr. Brown said, he talked about 30 times with White House officials concerning preparations. Two of the conversations were with Mr. Bush, he said, including one call in which he asked the president to call Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco of Louisiana and Mayor C. Ray Nagin of New Orleans to persuade them to order a mandatory evacuation.

Both President Bush and Michael Chertoff, the head of the Homeland Security Department, have said that they learned of levee breaks on Tuesday. At the time, Mr. Bush said, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
…

And now with cadence, inflection and inspiration stolen shamelessly from Mr. Longfellow’s “Paul Revere's Ride” (Forgive me Henry)...

The Dubya Culpa of Horselawyer Brown.

Listen my children; take this all down.
The "Dubya Culpa" of Horselawyer Brown.
On the twenty-ninth of August, in 2005,
In a city no longer alive,
In a city that Brown let drown.

He said to his friend, "If New Orleans falls
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Don’t bother me: hold all my calls.
And “tie or no-tie” for my big date tonight?
Yawn if by land, and yawn if by sea;
Because I on a whole other coastline will be,
Trying on shoes, doing a bong.
In a natty blue shirt…or would that just look wrong?

Then he said "Cheery-bye” as the storm roared ashore
And admired the Nordstroms pants that he wore,
While far away Katrina stormed inland to stay
And began killing people who could not get away.
She rode in like nature’s own nuclear war;
Or a blood hungry junkie looking to score.
Who slays by the hundreds and goes hunting for more.
The huge black hulk, that was magnified
By the surge of a deep oceanic tide.

Meanwhile, Dubya’s still on extended “Me” time.
”Clearing more brush”. Havin’ some cake,
Ridin’ that “bike” ‘round ‘ol Condi Lake.
The thunder of pain along the Gulf Coast,
Can’t get the Great Man off the fucking dime.
Nor from his lazy-ass lassitude wake.
While an American city gave up the ghost.

Then he turned his spiffy DVD player on,
After havin’ some ribs and killin’ a bug,
And challenging Jeb to a hooch chug-a-lug
To relax with the Swayze-riffic “Red Dawn”.
But someone had swapped out that estimable flick
And dropped in something starring some chick.
No ass-kicking Swayze did Dubya see
No cool Charlie Sheen or Franky McRae
No Powers Booth or C. Thomas Howell
No Leah Thompson or Vladek Sheybal
The night “Katrina The Movie” got shown on teevee.

By now through the streets floated the dead,
The living huddled, frightened and growing ill,
And from D.C. came a silence so deep and still
While on the deceased, alligators fed.
To the Superdome the survivors went
Or into the attics the storm some had sent.
And seeming to whisper, "We are now all in Hell"
New Orleans the Great City into ruin she fell.
And across the nation washed a wave of dread
Was our great Delta city actually dead?
And suddenly all our thoughts are bent
On that FEMA Fop so far, far, far away.
Who could not spare a minute from his busy day
On the city through which someone’s mother now floats
On a rising tide of wrecked house and boats.

And now impatient to shift away blame,
(The papers still full of Valerie Plame)
On that whole other shore fretted Horselawyer Brown.
Who treated it all like an unpleasant game.
Who now gazed at the rubble, and played the Clown.
Less animated that either Wallace or Grommet.
Horselawyer Brown says, “You’ll really vomit”
"If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire!”
Smiling impishly while hundreds and hundreds expire.
This self-declared “Fashion God” of the GOP
Who fiddled while NOLA was washed out to sea
Who rolled up his sleeves on his valet’s advice
This pinheaded crony who decided Maine needed ice.
Who thinks to himself, as the city goes under,
"There go my hope of being the next Condi Rice”
And in who’s back can I stick my blunder.

Because bodies were now being left on the street,
Just shapes in the moonlight; a bulk in the dark.
No electricity, except in one, special park.
Except when Dubya finally got to his feet;
And flew down to NOLA to set it all right,
By throwing some words at this terrible plight;
Words now long since faded, like sparks in the night,
Words – all his words – all light and no heat.
He left NOLA behind, just one more stump speech,
This breaker of nations; this Commander-In-Breach.
Who was asleep at his post when in came the tide;
This American Dauphin whom the Truth does not budge
Who’ll be summed up by History, that merciless Judge.
His life in three words: “This President Lied”.

It was not half a week
Before “It’s Nagin!” was claimed
And when that started to reek
The governor got blamed,
And that’s when the plan
became very plain
Every Dem in the world
was gonna get flamed.

And let's not forget to heap blame on the dead.
Those unfit to live, or so Freepers said.
And the living were all looters of a criminal mind
And all “Soooo black”, Wolf Blitzer opined.
No, not fellow citizens trapped in some kind of Hell.
No, as Mommy Bush burbled, “It worked out quite well!”

But reality is a pesky thing,
And now the record of those days comes down
As Mr. Heckuvajob begins to sing.
What truly happened with the levees,
What really brought us to our knees
Is now being spoken by Horselawyer Brown.
Who was far away, safe and asleep in his bed
As our Beloved NOLA began to fall.
Her sodden streets stacked up with dead,
Abandoned by Washington, one and all.

And now comes the rest. In the Times you have read
How the whole gang of them have lied and have fled
How no one wanted to take the call,
From anyone interrupting their fancy dress ball.
Of a President who will not feel your pain,
So don’t bother to call him back again.
Of an Administration run by Toads,
Lackeys and lickspittles and doughy pantsloads.

So in the night there was Horselawyer Brown;
An impotent, pissy Barney Fife on crack.
A middle-aged, middle management hack
Who fell apart when the shit came down.
A heap of weakness: Just another Bush whore,
Who’d have never had a job under President Gore.
Just another Republican who left us a mess.
Another Crony Affirmative Action Success.

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people must wake up and hear this clown
His ballad of incompetence, sleaze and greed,
The “Dubya Culpa” of Horselawyer Brown.