Hunter Heralds Horseshit

I had been annoyed with Hunter at Dailykos a while back for playing the moderation game; fortunately, there no moderation here , when he tears the living heart out of the new "Bush pleaded for the evacuation" talking point. Not only does he refute it (although it's been refuted enough already), but breaks down how it's even implausible:

Following the lie, however, we see that in order to even argue the point, you have to agree with a whole litany of other points:

* That President Bush himself, as well as presumably his entire team, knew full well that Katrina was a devastating storm requiring mass evacuations in front of it, and one which would wreak catastrophic damage.

* And yet President Bush, and the rest of his cabinet, remained on vacation while they knew that.

* And yet FEMA was utterly unprepared, apparently, to offer assistance for it.

* And yet Homeland Security did, apparently, nothing to ensure FEMA was prepared to offer assistance for it.

* And yet in spite of apparently knowing the danger to New Orleans in specific, both the President and the administrator of FEMA were completely unaware that anyone had "foreseen" that the levees would fail -- and apparently was only monitoring the levee condition via newspaper headlines.

* And yet, in the days following the storm, the FEMA director insisted that he wasn't even aware 15,000 evacuees had fled to the New Orleans convention center, a designated shelter area, until he was told by reporters.

* And yet, FEMA continued to reject assistance and turn rescuers away during the most critical days after the storm.

As Hunter points out, having Bush warn Blanco and the mayor beforehand makes his actions spectacularly worse, not better.

Here's the problem, with all these lies. There's a city gone. And during the period of time when the people of that city needed help most, that help was not there. That's not spinnable. That's simple fact. It's not going to go away.

So let's nail this down, exactly what Bush did know, and when he knew it. If the White House spin is that George W. Bush knew full well what was going on, even more than the local and state officials did, one would think that would predicate that George W. Bush has responsibility for government actions -- or lack of actions -- during these "death hours".

One would think.

One would think.

But many don't.