September 26, 2005 | 7:19 p.m. ET

Brownie's got a heckuva new job (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS — Even his staunchest defenders had long since admitted that whatever else the President did or didn't do, or was or wasn't supposed to do, his supposedly solid political sense let him down completely at the beginning of the month of the hurricanes.     

It had seemed to rebound lately. Until today, anyway.

That's when a protestor was arrested on a technicality, not far from the White House. You might recognize her name: Cindy Sheehan.
      
And, that's when it was revealed that FEMA had apparently rehired a former employee as a consultant. You might recognize his name, too — Mike Brown.

At a meeting with staff of the special House committee looking into Katrina preparations today, the disgraced and displaced former FEMA director said he had rejoined the agency as a consultant to "provide a review" of how the agency functioned before, during, and after the storm. This according to two congressional sources.
      
A congressional aide told NBC News nobody's sure — but it is assumed Brown is being paid by FEMA. He is to testify tomorrow before that House committee, prompting our colleague Howard Fineman to joke that only in Washington would a man on his way to the electric chair be paid to belt himself in.

But the timing — Brown’s announcement to the staffers came just hours after the arrest of Sheehan in Washington for not having a permit to sit down rather than just march — suggests that the political tin ear is back in control at The White House.

The President doesn’t run The District of Columbia police, of course — not even Karl Rove can claim that responsibility. But one would think, what with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita proving to the administration the wisdom of the old saw that it’s truly an ill wind that blows no one any good, a message would’ve gone out. Something along the lines of: ‘don’t touch Cindy Sheehan even if she self-immolates’ — we finally just ended her publicity streak.

And one would’ve thought the FEMA folks would have been smarter than to let the face of the Katrina disaster, Mike Brown, back on to the public stage.

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September 12, 2005 | 7:16 p.m. ET

New FEMA boss is 'Duct Tape Man'  (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS — If Michael Brown’s resignation this afternoon as the head of FEMA was supposed to end the political controversy over the administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina, it probably won't.

In another gesture symbolizing the continued confusion of the federal response, the man President Bush immediately named to succeed “Brownie,” proves to have been the same FEMA official who, two-and-a-half years ago, suggested that Americans stock up on duct tape to protect against a biological or chemical terrorist attack.

David Paulison, then the government's Fire Administrator, joined with the then-head of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, on February 10th, 2003, to say that duct tape and plastic sheeting should be part of any home's "survival kit" in preparation for a terrorist attack. That set off a run on duct tape at stores, and widespread criticism of the administration. It might have been the first time after 9/11 that a large number of Americans wondered if the government really knew what it was talking about when it came to disaster preparedness.

And the man behind that politically explosive proposal, has just been named to succeed the man who had been the face of the politically explosive response to Hurricane Katrina.

Paulison brings an extensive resume to the post. He ran fire operations for Miami-Dade County in Florida, and was past president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs. But in light of the response to this hurricane, another comment he made at the time of the Duct Tape announcements rings especially loudly. Paulison said in February, 2003, that in the first 48 to 72 hours of an emergency, many Americans would likely have to look after themselves.

As to the exit of Mr. Brown, who knows how many of the millions of Americans directly or indirectly touched by Hurricane Katrina probably had the identical thought when he quit his post this afternoon: Namely, that he was no doubt already updating his padded resume.
       
And his departure was not even unattended by confusion. In Brown’s statement, he wrote, “As I told the President, it is important that I leave now.” But when first asked about it during his tour of Mississippi, Mr. Bush said he had no details, hadn’t talked to Brown or Homeland Security chief Chertoff, and, “maybe you know something I don’t know.” Later, press secretary Scott McClellan said that the President had already known about the resignation — he just hadn't known that it had been made public.

And he was already just minutes away from naming Brown’s successor: Duct Tape Man.
       
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September 8, 2005 | 4:41 p.m. ET

With friends like these (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS — It should be no surprise that criticism of the president, or the federal response, in the wake of the disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina, has been portrayed as partisan pot-shooting. That is the default setting of our world, after all. We take sides on everything.

Well, except for 9/11, when Mr. Bush's approval rating was 90% and his disapproval, 6%.

And also, except for right now, when the idea that only Liberals or political opportunists are being critical, is not just intuitively nuts — it's factually ludicrous. Read this:

The language is, to say the least, uncategorical. "Democrats have seized on the administration's performance in handling Katrina to bash George W. Bush," the nationally-syndicated columnist writes. "But Republicans are not much happier with him... When Republican House members participated in a telephone conference call September 1, the air was blue with complaints about the handling of Katrina... the GOP lawmakers were unhappy with their administration's performance."
     
That's from today's column from Robert Novak — not exactly known as a thorn in the administration's side.
      
For the President, it actually gets worse. Many editorials in major newspapers have been almost venomous towards Mr. Bush and the federal response. An excerpt from one this morning: "Mayor Nagin's responses to this crisis, while flawed, have shown better leadership than both Governor Blanco's and President Bush's."
      
That's from today's official editorial in The Union-Leader of Manchester, New Hampshire. That's the newspaper that has previously identified itself as the most conservative in the country. It has six national columnists: Novak, Jonah Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Michelle Malkin, Deroy Murdock, and George Will. Not exactly a hotbed of commies.
      
And what it wrote about Mr. Bush today is nothing compared to what it wrote about him last Wednesday — decrying his decision to continue with his ordinary schedule, "...as if nothing important had happened the day before."
     
"A better leader," the paper continued on August 31st, "would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.
     
"The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months following September 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster, and economic uncertainty."

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September 5, 2005 | 8:58 p.m. ET

The "city" of Louisiana (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS — Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said it all, starting his news briefing Saturday afternoon: "Louisiana is a city that is largely underwater..."

Well there's your problem right there.

If ever a slip-of-the-tongue defined a government's response to a crisis, this was it.

The seeming definition of our time and our leaders had been their insistence on slashing federal budgets for projects that might’ve saved New Orleans. The seeming characterization of our government that it was on vacation when the city was lost, and could barely tear itself away from commemorating V.J. Day and watching Monty Python's Flying Circus, to at least pretend to get back to work. The seeming identification of these hapless bureaucrats: their pathetic use of the future tense in terms of relief they could’ve brought last Monday and Tuesday — like the President, whose statements have looked like they’re being transmitted to us by some kind of four-day tape-delay.

But no. The incompetence and the ludicrous prioritization will forever be symbolized by one gaffe by of the head of what is ironically called “The Department of Homeland Security”: “Louisiana is a city…”

Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the "I-Me" switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.
     
And as that sorry recital of self-absorption dragged on, I have resisted editorial comment. The focus needed to be on the efforts to save the stranded — even the internet's meager powers were correctly devoted to telling the stories of the twin disasters, natural... and government-made.

But now, at least, it is has stopped getting exponentially worse in Mississippi and Alabama and New Orleans and Louisiana (the state, not the city). And, having given our leaders what we know now is the week or so they need to get their act together, that period of editorial silence I mentioned, should come to an end.
      
No one is suggesting that mayors or governors in the afflicted areas, nor the federal government, should be able to stop hurricanes.  Lord knows, no one is suggesting that we should ever prioritize levee improvement for a below-sea-level city, ahead of $454 million worth of trophy bridges for the politicians of Alaska.
      
But, nationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.
     
It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?
     
I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.

For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — "New Orleans."

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have foreseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."
      
In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

As we emphasized to you here all last week, the realities of the region are such that New Orleans is going to be largely uninhabitable for a lot longer than anybody is yet willing to recognize. Lord knows when the last body will be found, or the last artifact of the levee break, dug up. Could be next March. Could be 2100. By then, in the muck and toxic mire of New Orleans, they may even find our government's credibility.

Somewhere, in the City of Louisiana.

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September 1, 2005 | 5:21 p.m. ET

Desperate pleas for help (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS — If you have not yet seen the desperate pleas from people at the New Orleans Convention Center to NBC cameraman Tony Zumbado, they will run in full on Countdown tonight at 8 p.m. ET, and Tony is scheduled to join us.

We don't often 'pitch' you on specific items in the program but what Tony captured constitute transcendant images and comments from Americans who followed the rules and saw the system break down around them.

We will also tonight face up to the scientific practacalities of what happens after they get the people — and the water — out of New Orleans. The national intuition suggests it'll be months before the place is inhabitable. The realities may be that it'll be years.

And we'll premiere tonight a segment called "I'm Okay" — a small public service, suggested by a viewer, for victims who have not been able to contact relatives and friends in other cities, at the end of the hour.

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September 1, 2005 | 8:25 a.m. ET

Are we being realistic about New Orleans? (Keith Olbermann)

SECAUCUS — We are not acknowledging much besides the best-case scenario in New Orleans.

The city may not be back in six weeks. Or six months. Or six years.

That’s kind of shocking to say, given the trauma and dislocation of the last five days. But it’s true nonetheless. We have to be hopeful, for the 23,000 now getting a tour of the sports domes of the southwest, for the million or more feeling far away and lost, for the people still trapped, for the unknown hundreds or thousands dead.

But long-term we may be doing them — and ourselves — more harm than good.

Consider two pieces in this morning’s papers from separate fields — science and sports — in which relying on the best-case scenario can be fatal or financially disastrous. While we instinctively shake our heads at Mayor Ray Nagin’s revision of his recovery timetable from 10-12 weeks, to 14-16, while we wonder why he should be so dour when our modern world can put the Stock Exchange back on line on 9/17/01, when we have technological capability undreamed of even when we were rebuilding Europe after the Second World War — it may prove that even Mr. Nagin may be wearing rose-colored glasses.

Look at what Howard Beck and Pete Thamel are writing in The New York Times about the National Basketball Association moving the New Orleans Hornets franchise out — not just for a few weeks, or the first half of the season, but until October, 2006. The NBA is about people and money, and when it senses a lack of either in one of its franchise cities, it bails. Yesterday, an e-mail went out from the league to each of the 30 teams instructing them to make provisions for playing the Hornets somewhere else this season.

There’s only one reason for that. The NBA has examined the situation and has serious doubts that there will be people in New Orleans to go see basketball any time this winter, or roads for them to travel in, or public health conditions permitting 15,000 people to gather in one space.

When I interviewed FEMA Director Mike Brown on Countdown last night, I took him into the future and asked him if, when New Orleans was “reopened,” he would look back at the greatest step in that process, the decontamination of the water now drowning the city. He agreed completely. It’s not just water — it’s water with decomposing people and animals in it. And it’s water full of chemicals and solvents and battery acid and anything else dangerous in a city. And it’s water destroying homes and foundations and roads. And it’s water ruining, of all things, the water system.

And the remedy might even be worse than the cure. Guy Gugliotta and Peter Whoriskey writes in The Washington Post this morning that scientists are afraid of what happens after they drain the floodwaters back into Lake Pontchartrain. It’s not just water any more, they say, it’s a toxic soup now being dumped into the delta surrounding the city. Getting it out of people’s houses is one thing. Getting it out of the ecosystem is — in the worst-case scenario — more expensive than the Gross National Product of this country.

If that isn’t enough to make you wonder when the concept of “New Orleans” will be operative again, there’s a nauseatingly prescient article in the files of U.S. News And World Report. Posted exactly six weeks ago, the piece posited a hurricane-delivered flood that “could take months to drain,” and quotes an LSU expert as forecasting somebody “creating a refugee camp for a million homeless residents.”

When Chicago burned in 1871 it was widely predicted that the city would return to being prairie brush by the spring of 1872. No one would ever live in San Francisco again after 1906. Europe would never stand upright after the way everybody bombed each other from 1939 to 1945.

Those were all pinheaded predictions. And this piece here is not going to suggest the place is finished. I’m just suggesting that realism is as important as optimism right now. The danger to the immediate future of New Orleans wasn’t the hurricane, and it isn’t the looting, and it isn’t lack of resolve nor skill. The danger? The city is still soaking in it.

E-mail me at .  To learn how you can help, please visit our website.

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