Incredible Shrinking President

There are rumors out there that the President's remarks last night weren't even live. Then again, neither was the crowd. And while Bush was missing in action in St. Paul, so was any mention of him from the other speakers on the dais.

We just checked all the full texts of the speeches from last night's festivities that are on the GOP convention's official Web page. The word "Bush" appears exactly zero times. The word "president" doesn't appear anywhere in connection with Bush.

Quite a trick, making the most powerful man in the world disappear. Of course, it's an imperative when he's out there saying batshit crazy nonsense like this:

President Bush said Tuesday that while it’s too early to assess Hurricane Gustav’s damage to U.S. oil infrastructure off the Gulf Coast, the storm should prompt Congress to OK more domestic oil production.

“One thing is for certain, when Congress comes back, they’ve got to understand that we need more domestic energy, not less,” Bush said in the Roosevelt Room. “One place to find it is offshore America - lands that have been taken off the books, so to speak, by congressional law - and now they need to give us a chance to find more oil and gas here at home.”

Yes, nothing says "we need to set up more offshore oil rigs" more than dangerous storms off the American coastline that threaten oil rigs. Good thinkin', Mr. President!

Of course, McCain has swallowed this anti-environment drill now rhetoric whole, and the Palin pick just proves that. As Friedman says here (hey, sometimes he makes sense), "Palin’s much ballyhooed confrontations with the oil industry have all been about who should get more of the windfall profits, not how to end our addiction." If the next President needs to lead on fighting climate change then there's only one choice. And Bush and McCain are on the wrong side of history.

...also AWOL from the Republican confab - any talk of the economy. I guess there's no honor in it.

The GOP Restoration Starts Today... Snicker

So with Hurricane Gustav thankfully rerouting away from New Orleans and with the damage more minimal than expected, the Republicans will try to fire up their red meat machine in force tonight to make up for lost time. Of course, the looming hurricane didn't stop them from partying with the band "Hookers & Blow" last night.

The problem is there's another hurricane in the Gulf that could hit Florida and Georgia on Thursday, and with the GOP already on record as refraining from attacks in the midst of a natural disaster, they are constrained and in a box here. So it's kind of a hybrid convention instead of the expected full-fledged assault on Barack Obama. They had to shuffle the schedule, and tonight Unca Fred Thompson and Droopy Dog Lieberman are on tap, along with President Bush. They couldn't even dodge that bullet of having Bush associated with McCain at the convention; literally everything he says tonight can be made into 30-second TV commercials. And the behind the scenes stuff is delicious:

Almost certainly, Bush had to cancel his planned speech while Gustav loomed. But the sources say he didn't like the idea and felt pushed. Bush is described by sources as "furious" at McCain for being deprived of his last appearance before his party, which nominated him twice, as a sitting president. He believes he is being treated disrespectfully.

Shuttering the convention for a night was probably inevitable given the hurricane, but to provide a cover-up for scratching Bush and Cheney it became absolutely necessary. But once the hurricane passed, Bush asserted his primacy as president and forced his way back on the schedule to deliver a satellite speech to the convention.

McCain is desperately seeking ways to pivot from Bush, whose in-person appearance on the first night of the convention threatened to obliterate his message as a "maverick" and "reformer." Even though McCain himself would not be onstage, Bush and Cheney would have dominated the opening and underlined continuity between their administration and McCain. The cancellation of the first night of the convention is a small price to pay for their absence.

McCain's campaign is perfectly aware of the mortal danger of Bush's embrace. He has needed the president to rally the Republican base. But once he has the nomination his imperative is to project himself as an antidote to what has gone wrong with Republicanism.

This is the reason for putting Lieberman on the same night as Bush, to somehow show that McCain's Republican Party is even crazier than Bush on foreign affairs moderate and post-partisan. So much so that Lieberman has previously praised Obama to the hills, which won't be repeated tonight.

The Republicans wanted a week of sustained attacks on their opponent. But they got a muddled convention filled with distractions over hurricane on the ground and Hurricane Sarah Palin and Hurricane Bush's Ego. Not to mention that there's a 10,000-strong contingent of Ron Paul supporters having a bigger and more interesting convention right next door, which is starting to get some media attention.

There's no room at the Xcel Energy Center for maverick Ron Paul, so his acolytes have packed their cars, hitched rides on "Ronvoys" and will pitch tents at Ronstock '08 in defiance of next week's GOP convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Almost 9,800 tickets had been sold for the Rally for the Republic, being held in Minneapolis, which seeks to bring together activists who are anti-war, anti-government regulation, anti-immigration, anti-taxes, anti-Federal Reserve, anti-outsourcing, pro-individual liberty, pro-civil liberties and pro-Paul.

The Ronvoys — fleets of buses and vans carrying Paul's loyalists — were to begin arriving Saturday. A few rally-goers planned to walk from Green Bay, Wis., and join up with Paul for the final miles of their Walk4Freedom. Other attendees are driving, carpooling or flying in for the convention alternative.

The McCain camp blocked Paul from speaking on the convention floor despite his getting more votes than Giuliani or Thompson in the primaries. He's expecting 18,000 at his own rally today.

The Paul movement is the only real one in St. Paul today. The conservative movement is flailing.

Slower And To The Left

As I hoped, Hurricane Gustav changed course slightly, moving to the West and away from New Orleans, and the storm downgraded to a Category 2 storm upon landfall. The eye of the storm is 40 miles west of the city, toward Houma. Now, the Industrial Canal is being overtopped, and some runaway barges and tugboats are flying around in the area, and there are at least six hours to go here. But the absolute worst option has not materialized... yet. And I'm hopeful that the storm is far away enough that we won't see catastrophic flooding.

But you never know. The Port of New Orleans is underwater. If this was a Category 4 storm we'd be in a tremendous amount of trouble. The Army Corps of Engineers simply never built anything to stop water from Lake Pontchartrain to stream in through the Industrial Canal. If there's real breaching, the Lower Ninth is going to fill up. Again.

Thank the stars that evacuation efforts were so successful.

...I think the Republicans are jumping the gun here. It sounds like Laura Bush and Cindy McCain are going to offer nonpartisan messages, but the split-screen potential is not good. Essentially, the RNC cancelled their prime-time schedule today because they had to. Not only did Bush and Cheney cancel, but Arnold Schwarzenegger said he couldn't make it because of the budget crisis. That leaves Joe Lieberman. For the full hour. Not even Larry King would book that.

Meanwhile, you won't get this from the major media, but the GOP delegates are doing plenty of partying. It's not like they're TOTALLY refraining from fiddling while Rome may burn.

UPDATE: CNN reports "spurts of water" are coming into the Lower Ninth Ward already. This isn't that big a storm and the levees are already starting to fail.

Also, there's one 10,000-member event going on as scheduled today in Minneapolis, from the real PUMAs, the Ron Paul libertarians. Since the airtime is all booked, you'd think that the media would head on over and see what the fuss is about, right? Right?

I know the answer to that question.

A Man, A Plan, A Levee

Panamanian strongman John McCain has this idea that, by halting most RNC convention activities and sending Bush and Cheney home, he will be seen as a noble warrior fighting the hurricane all by himself and restoring the Grand Old Party's good name. And that may be true - certainly McCain was aching for a way to keep Bush at arm's length, he would have sent him off if there was the chance of hail somewhere in the country - but if the levees fail again three years after billions of dollars was appropriated to fix them, the conservative failure of government will look hauntingly familiar.

On the eve of Hurricane Gustav's expected arrival, many in New Orleans, from residents of the Ninth Ward to the city's mayor to the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, have their doubts about whether the levees will hold.

"There is a real likelihood of getting some overtopping. Additionally, rain is a big factor here," said DHS chief Michael Chertoff about water pouring over the tops of the levees.

Three years since Katrina and $3 billion later, the levees still leak and much of the repair work remains incomplete.

"Huge areas of Louisiana are going to be devastated. We're going in essence to see what Katrina didn't destroy, what Rita didn't destroy in 2005 being destroyed now in 2008," said Ivor Van Heerden, a professor at Louisiana State University who wrote a book about why the levees broke during Katrina.

At best the levees are estimated to be able to withstand water levels rising at the rate of an inch and hour. The coming storm, however, promises much more. In some places storm surge could reach 18 feet.

The Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with repairing the levees, says work was being accelerated.

Despite Congress authorizing $12.8 billion to rebuild the levees, only $3 billion has been spent. The engineers blame red tape, saying the studies, approvals and environmental committees have all slowed down the work.

The Army Corps is already trying to blame it on the environmentalists, but considering that the press recently found engineers filling the levees with newspaper, their protestations aren't really credible. In fact, they failed to use the money and are scrambling to finish in 48 hours what they haven't done in 3 years.

And levee money isn't the only money unspent in New Orleans.

NEW ORLEANS — It was the largest housing aid program in American history, billed as the essential government tool that would make New Orleans whole after Hurricane Katrina.

Yet even though about $3.3 billion of federal taxpayer money has been spent here on the cash grant program known as the Road Home, New Orleans on the third anniversary of the hurricane remains almost as much of a patchwork as it did last year, before most of the money was spent.

The program has had no effect on most of the houses in New Orleans, and has played only a limited role in bringing back the neighborhoods most flooded in the storm. And as Hurricane Gustav bears down on the city, many residents are worried that the work already accomplished could be set back.

I hope that the storm makes a hard left and New Orleans is spared, but if it heads in its current direction, the levees are going to fail and the city will again fill with water. And no amount of efforts to care from St. Paul will be able to counteract that shot of a flooded city as a cause of levee failure, again. The evacuation has gone well, and Bush and his team have at least looked attentive, but they don't necessarily get credit for doing their job the second time around, and they certainly get no credit for building substandard levees. Republicans will be forced to own their own failure, both in their inability to build workable infrastructure and their resistance to combat climate change and the stronger, more frequent storms that are a side effect.

...I would also say that a convention without four days of sustained attacks on Barack Obama will be harmful for the GOP's hopes in November, and the inevitable attack will provide the Obama campaign the ability to throw a major hissy fit if they see fit. Gov. Palin's introduction to the country will be dampened as well.

The Leadership Difference

One candidate sees a brewing natural disaster and exploits it by heading down to the danger zone forcing the deploying of all kinds of resources that could be used to save people's lives.

Another candidate offers to mobilize resources and actually provide comfort and aid.

Sen. Barack Obama announced that his campaign would mobilize supporters from his enormous e-mail list to send money or enlist as volunteers once the impact of Hurricane Gustav becomes apparent.

Obama told reporters that his campaign already is coordinating with local authorities. The senator has said he has no plans to go to the region, because of the potential disruption, although Sen. John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are heading to Mississippi today.

"We can activate an e-mail list of a couple million people who want to give back," Obama said. "I think we can get tons of volunteers to travel down there if it becomes necessary."

Calling Americans to service is one of Obama's founding principles.

By the way, seeing Bush and Cheney bug out of the convention was so predictable. If there was a chance of hail in Wichita they would have demurred to "monitor the disaster."

Worse Than Katrina

Gustav is twice the size of Katrina, and by the time it passes through the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico it'll be bigger. They've begun the mandatory evacuations.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mandatory evacuation of the city beginning 8 a.m. Sunday but urged residents to consider escaping "the mother of all storms" before then.

"You need to be scared," Nagin said of the Category 4 hurricane tearing along Cuba's western coast. "You need to be concerned, and you need to get your butts moving out of New Orleans right now. This is the storm of the century."

The city's west bank is to evacuate at 8 a.m.

Nagin said the city had evacuated roughly 10,000 people Saturday on buses, trains and planes, in addition to the thousands who left on their own. Buses from collection points would continue running until midnight and resume at 6 a.m. Sunday, he said.

Here's what the region DOESN'T need - a Presidential candidate visit so that resources can be pulled from public safety. Who does McCain expect to have listen to him prattle on, instead of getting the hell out of town? Also, the talk about how it "wouldn't be appropriate" to hold a big party while a major American city is in peril, John? You don't get to say that.

It looks like the Republicans are going to put on their compassionate face on this one, scaling back their convention and doing some kind of mass telethon, using the convention as a marketing tool. I don't think that is going to work. Presumably, Americans actually remember Katrina and the stunning lack of competence. The graphic of the storm bearing down on the city in a picture-in-picture while speeches are being made - one from the Governor of Louisiana - is not going to be pretty. This is what's going to linger:



Meanwhile, I'm voting for Matt Duss. For something.

Earlier today, ThinkProgress contacted John Hagee Ministries to see if erstwhile John McCain endorser Rev. Hagee saw the Lord’s hand in reports that President Bush might not speak at the Republican National Convention on Monday because of Tropical Storm Gustav [...]

ThinkProgress asked Rev. Hagee’s spokesperson, Kara Silverman, whether Gustav’s possible impact on the Republican National Convention might be seen as punishment against Republicans for their not having done enough to combat the “homosexual agenda,” or whether this storm could be attributed to some other target of divine wrath.

Ms. Silverman said Hagee had “no comment.”

Brilliant.

But if you're anywhere near the Gulf, the take away from this post is, get the hell out of town.

Cat 4

And growing. I have absolutely no faith that DHS and FEMA have the evacuation under control. We're in for more trouble if this hits the Gulf Coast.

Gustav swelled into a fearsome Category 4 hurricane with winds of 145 mph on Saturday as Cuba raced to evacuate more than 240,000 people and Americans to the north clogged highways fleeing New Orleans.

Gustav already has killed 78 people in the Caribbean and the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said it could strengthen even more after hitting Cuba and entering the warm Gulf of Mexico on a projected course for the Katrina-battered U.S. coast.

The people who brought you government as the problem are unequipped to deal with crisis, again. Forget cancelling the RNC. Cancel the Republican Party.

UPDATE: When Joe freakin' Lieberman still has questions about FEMA's effectiveness, that makes me want to sob.