Add Jeff Miller (R-FL) to My List...

I focused on Christopher Shays last week because I happened to see a replay of his grandstanding during the House hearings on Hurricane Katrina. He's still on the list of folks who'd otherwise get a lump of coal...except that I won't give him that, or even a big old dung ball, just because he could potentially use either for fuel, and I want to see the rotten bastard freeze in the dark...along with his good friend Jeff Miller:

Why did people die in New Orleans?
In case you missed it, one of the more astounding moments in last week's Congressional hearings about Hurricane Katrina was seeing a series of Republican lawmakers claim that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco was personally responsible for the 1,086 known to have died in the storm...

Chris Kromm goes on to cite this Pic editorial (sorry I missed it earlier) from Jarvis DeBerry:

One of the lingering myths about Hurricane Katrina is that everybody who died here was trapped here and that, in fact, no one would have died if local and state governments had provided buses out of town. That myth also assumes that upon hearing of a mandatory evacuation, everybody with the means to leave town does so.

The falsity of both claims has been well-established. The Times-Picayune has run dozens of obituaries under the headline "Katrina's Lives Lost." In their interviews with relatives of the deceased, reporters have not encountered one person whose loved one wanted to leave but could not. We might assume that some of those who died at local nursing homes were trapped; not by government, however, but by the folks who ran those nursing homes.

There probably were some people who did not have transportation to leave and declined a free ride to the relative safety of the Louisiana Superdome. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that such people constitute a majority -- or even a significant minority -- of the fatalities. The truth is that many people made the fatal decision to stay.

Some members of the House Select Committee, which is ostensibly investigating the federal government's response to the crisis in the New Orleans area, insisted that Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Kathleen Blanco accept personal responsibility for the people who died.

U.S. Rep Jeff Miller, R-Fla., giving himself over wholly to demagoguery, told Blanco that the 1,086 Louisiana residents known to have died in the storm are about half the number of American lives lost in Iraq.

"You lost that many in one day," he said.

She lost that many?

Is Miller suggesting that Blanco's failure to drag people out by their ankles makes her culpable for their deaths? Is he so committed to partisan gamesmanship that he's willing to put Blanco's failings on par with the crumbling of the federal government's floodwalls?

Similarly, do Republicans Hal Rogers of Kentucky and Christopher Shays of Connecticut really believe Mayor Nagin should have told residents to leave New Orleans Friday morning when a mild-mannered Hurricane Katrina looked destined to hit Apalachicola, Fla.?

I realize that the city's own literature says evacuations should begin 72 hours before a projected landfall, but there can't be anybody in local government who believed that residents would really have left three days in advance of any hurricane, especially not one that looked like it was going to hit 363 miles away.

Rogers and Shays are pandering. What universe of people would simultaneously be impressionable enough to be convinced to leave on Friday but so stubborn that they wouldn't leave on Saturday or Sunday?

By criticizing Nagin for a mandatory evacuation call that came 19 hours before landfall, they leave the impression that the announcement was the mayor's first word of warning.

Actually, it was but one in a series of warnings that began early Saturday and became increasingly more insistent.

Nagin and Blanco have both made notable mistakes since this crisis began, but it is dishonest and mean-spirited of Congress to suggest that mistakes made by either one makes them liable for nearly 1,100 lives.

Maybe a small percentage of those who perished would still be alive if Nagin and Blanco had worked together to provide transportation.

But if the federal government's floodwalls had held, it's doubtful anybody would have died at all.

The last line of the editorial is significant: the levees and floodwalls are a FEDERAL program--a program that, in conjunction with other levees and floodwalls, has been of enormous benefit to the entire nation in providing safe, navigable portage for ships transporting exports and imports between the United States and the world. No one--least of all stupid little punks like Miller and Shays--should forget this. Had the levees and floodwalls held, the city wouldn't be in such dire straits.

You know, it's tough enough to knock ANY sense into a wingnut cranium--even IF this relatively easy-to-grasp fact re: the levees, somehow found its way into 'nut gray matter, the next knee-jerk reflex of the kind they're so fond of would immediately kick into motion: that is, blame Bill Clinton. That Bill Clinton has been out of office since January 20, 2001 is of little concern to their rudimentary thought process--they've been alternatly blaming him--or, more recently, falsely citing him as precedent--to such an extent psychologists would have a field day describing truly epic levels of envious resentment not seen since Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.

But I digress...back to the topic--Kromm, and YRHT both note the latest example of GOP hackery: they've tied Katrina recovery money to...drilling in ANWR, proving they really couldn't give a hot damn about New Orleans. It's all just politics to the bastards.

I tell you...generally I'm not one to espouse violence, but I'm beginning to wonder if what this country needs is a new Preston Brooks to come in and knock some sense into those people.