With Bush In Charge, We Won't Learn ANYTHING From Katrina

No wonder Bush and the Republicans oppose a bipartisan, independent commission -- it's a waste of time. They have to pay lip-service and testify and then read the damn report (that thing is long; it's like a book or something!) and then hope no one notices that they ignore most of the recommendations. So why not just kill the thing before it starts?

The members of the 9-11 commission all spoke out to condemn the response to Hurricane Katrina and point out the obvious: that most of their common sense, reasonable, why-the-hell-haven't-we-done-this-before suggestions have been completely ignored. You'd think this was pretty noteworthy given the utter incompetence of Bush and his cronies after having four years and billions of dollars to prepare for a threat that was widely predicted and trackable days in advance. So where did the NYT run the comments of the 9-11 commission? On page A-23 in a tiny little box.

9-11 figure Thomas Kean was on ABC highlighting just one recommendation that was ignored that could have made a big difference: devoting "spectrum" on the airwaves to first responders so they could communicate with each other. (On 9-11, the firefighters couldn't speak to the cops who couldn't speak to the people in helicopters or the EMTs, etc.) You'd think this would be done ASAP -- who the heck would object -- but right now Congress is looking at getting it done by 2009. Brilliant.

Any reason why we shouldn't kick out every bum who refuses to enact these proposals and -- after a later tragedy -- refuses to even study what went wrong? Nope.