09/10/2005
Weekend Katrina Update
The story of Dr. Ben Marble, who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina, and last week told Vice President Dick Cheney, "Go Fuck Yourself, Mr. Cheney. Go Fuck Yourself," on CNN.
Marble was cuffed and detained briefly by the Secret Service. He's now selling the video of the interaction on eBay.
Marble: "I am no fan of Mr. Cheney because of several reasons. For those who don't know, Mr. Cheney is infamous for telling Senator [Pat] Leahy 'go fu** yourself' on the Senate floor. Also, I am not happy about the fact that thousands have died due to the slow action of FEMA, not to even mention the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time, i.e. Iraq. I had no intention of harming anyone but merely wanted to echo Mr. Cheney's infamous words back at him. At that moment, I noticed the Secret Service guys with a panic-stricken look on their faces, like they were about to tackle me, so I calmly walked away back to my former house."
SHAME: White Katrina debit cards given to evacuees being used to buy $800 Louis Vuitton handbags in affluent Atlanta mall: Buyers "didn't look destitute by any stretch."
Feds knew they were wrong in banning media: "Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans."
Tom Delay to evacuees: "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?"
Posted 11:23 AM EST by Andy Towle in Current Affairs | Permalink
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God, that is funny ... brave... and just plain cool.
Posted by: Michael Peterson | Sep 10, 2005 12:35:48 PM
Tom DeLay needs to stick to his own district. For all you kids who don't live in Texas, DeLay does NOT represent Houston at all, he doesn't represent any district within the Houston city limits. He represents a suburb called SugarLand, southwest of Houston. Interesting fact, Sugarland useds to be a slave operated sugar plantation and now its a rich, white suburb.
It really bugs me that when people think about Texas, they automatically think about "Dubya", Enron, Halliburton,DeLay and cowboys. I hope people will start seeing Texas and Houston in a new light.
Posted by: christian | Sep 10, 2005 1:50:52 PM
Kudos to Dr. Marble! I am so tired of the sanitized and staged press conferences with our countries leadership. It's a shame that it has taken such a catastrophic disaster to finally make people wake up and see that the leadership has never really been in the best interests of the WHOLE of United States.
When you have a President who starts off by telling the head of FEMA that he's doing a great job while US citizens on US soil continue to die waiting to be rescued, that is just horrible. It is time for the leadership to be accountable and to stop blaming the liberals.
And no, I am not some left-wing, radical hippie. In the past, I've voted for the best candidate for the country. From Independents (Anderson) to Republicans (Regan) to Democrats (Carter and Clinton). I never trusted Bush from the get go in 2000, and now light is finally dawning on the rest of the folks. His cadre of sharks have destroyed this country.
Posted by: Rade | Sep 10, 2005 1:55:25 PM
Why am i not surprised? There will always be the few that make emergency efforts seem futile...I was watching the news the other day and a woman who had been in New Orleans and now in Houston was complaining about the wait for the debit cards, problem was she was platinum blonde and she had no dark roots, so somewhere between here and the hurricane, miss thing had her hair done...
Posted by: god | Sep 10, 2005 1:57:00 PM
Marble rocks.
Posted by: Glenn | Sep 10, 2005 2:19:50 PM
Jon Stewart rocks.
He covered the Marble/Cheney interaction on his show, even showing the tape twice.
Marble was cool, calm and collected. Didn't shout. Just said it. With a slight pause between the two simple sentences.
Some of the best tv I've ever enjoyed!
Posted by: jessejames | Sep 10, 2005 2:55:22 PM
Christian:
I lived in Houston near the inner loop until about 4 years ago. Tom DeLay was my Congressman (unfortunately). His district is mostly Sugarland but it meanders from there down along Buffalo Bayou. He may be an asshole, but he is the elected asshole representative of some parts of the west side of Houston.
One block over, our representative would have been Ken Benson.
Posted by: Stephen J. Hyland | Sep 10, 2005 3:08:28 PM
It doesn't surprise me a bit that FEMA emergency aid was spent on expensive luggage or spa treatments or prostitutes or anything frivolous. It was simply "found money" for well prepared evacuees.
If you had insurance, and you didn't have to worry about your job, and you left ahead of the storm, you probably only lost things that can easily be replaced. Why shouldn't you enjoy the FEMA cash? You've taken care of yourself, and you deserve a little pampering.
Not everyone displaced by this storm has a tragic story, and with a little luck, FEMA will help those in need, as well as their more fortunate neighbors. You can't deny disaster assistance to people who planned ahead.
Posted by: jay | Sep 10, 2005 3:35:40 PM
Bush already removed from ebay... darn it..
Posted by: Michael Peterson | Sep 10, 2005 3:56:59 PM
OMG! See! The negroes just can't control themselves! They're all on drugs! They're all lootin'! They're gonna come rape our women! Please! What is this, Faux News? A couple people abuse the FEMA cards, just like some people abuse welfare or some people commit crimes and we use them as the example to substantiate our racist attitudes and moral superiority. This debit card program is the only smart thing FEMA has done during this tragedy. How are these evacuees without checking accounts from the 9th Ward, St. Bernard and so many other poverty stricken areas of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast supposed to get the help they need now? So what if a couple people bought Louis at Lenox Square! Shame on you, Andy, for making this an issue on your otherwise intelligent and fascinating blog.
Posted by: Paul Burkley | Sep 10, 2005 4:45:50 PM
The Louis Vuitton story smells pretty bogus to me.
A) It's a rumor from an unnamed source and B) How could a $2,000 white Katrina debit card have ended up in Atlanta in time for this "outrage" to have taken place and been reported? Just Thursday it was reported that the Astrodome had to be locked down because the distribution of cards was so chaotic.
And we're supposed to believe someone walked up to a store in Buckhead and asked "Do you accept the hurricane Katrina debit card?"
My guess: the story's just made-up or is the result of an overactive imagination making guesses over transactions he or she barely witnessed.
Perhaps I'll be proved wrong but I think the story on this particular "story" ain't over yet.
Posted by: alan | Sep 10, 2005 7:51:27 PM
I live in Houston and had the pleasure of visiting the luxurious Galleria shopping mall a few times over the last few days. While I didn't notice anyone out of place at the LV or Gucci boutiques, there were a few (ahem) interesting characters roaming around the mall with newfound wealth (they're easily identifiable with their fluorescent wristbands).
I'd say a tragedy larger than wasting FEMA money on LV bags is the stragglers in Midtown who are begging for money on the street, claiming to be evacuees. Usually when you ask where their wristband is, they blush as if to say "oops" and then they go away.
Posted by: Sebastian | Sep 10, 2005 11:05:20 PM
I am glad to hear the evacuees are taking up nicely in ATL's Lenox Mall. HAHA.
Posted by: Nick | Sep 11, 2005 1:31:10 AM
Speaking of ugly leather bags, I say Barbara Bush started the rumor about the LVs.
Posted by: Leland | Sep 11, 2005 11:04:14 AM
Actually the Loius Vuitton may have been a fake after all... this from the Washington Post via UPI:
Seized counterfeit goods given to evacuees
Sep. 6, 2005 at 11:28AM
Fake and counterfeit-labeled items like clothing seized by the U.S. Customs are being made available to Hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston.
Besides clothing, the items include toys and even dog food, the Chicago Tribune reported.
More than 100,000 items were quickly taken from warehouses and more will follow, says the Homeland Security Department's Customs and Border Protection division.
The agency has some 1 million items stored, and officials are going through the inventory to see what else would be useful.
Posted by: dondon009 | Sep 11, 2005 6:59:23 PM
In regards to the Loius Vuitton purchases, it’s completely probable that some of the debit card recipients fenced them for cold hard cash. People sell their food stamp cards all the time. Sure it looks bad but who really knows? In all fairness it seems to be just a small fraction of those who received the cards. A few bad apples always get the press.
Posted by: MolassesOnassis | Sep 13, 2005 2:40:19 AM
BraveHeart!
Posted by: Gustavo Sorzano | Sep 13, 2005 12:58:39 PM
Welfare recipients don't always look destitute. Many of them are festooned in the latest & most expensive designer brands. Debit card recipients using the cards to purchase luxury goods is not a big surprise; drive through any neighborhood inhabited by welfare recipients & you're guaranteed to see ridiculously expensive luxury cars with absolutely hideous rims parked in front of third-world shacks inhabited by people decked out in incredibly overpriced designer trash (not usually knockoffs, either). And you cannot, I repeat CANNOT, purchase knock-off LV goods (or any other knock-off designer garbage so favored by these people) at the Galleria in Houston. These people's children can be half starving & naked & they'll spend their last government-issued dime on designer-made status symbols. Their opinion is that the guvment is there to feed their open mouths, much like baby birds in a nest. There's absolutely no hope for some of these people. Get used to it. Donate wisely.
Posted by: Houston resident | Sep 15, 2005 12:34:26 AM