Stupidest Man Alive

It's time for our once-every-three-months task of laying down a marker that National Review's Donald Luskin is indeed the stupidest man alive. It's a thankless task. But somebody needs to do it.

Today we have:

SO THIS NEWS WASN'T FIT TO PRINT? The New York Times keeps saying that Katrina was a disaster that "everyone knew was coming". But apparently not. On Sunday, August 28, the newspaper of record wrote not one single story about it. Check this out, at Neuro-Conservative.

However, if you look on page A14 of the Sunday, August 28, 2005 New York Times, you will find a photo and a caption. The caption reads:

Residents of New Orleans boarded up stores and homes yesterday as Hurricane Katrina began heading their way. President Bush declared a state of emergency in Louisiana, and a spokesman urged people to heed evacuation orders. The storm is expected to strengthen before reaching land tomorrow.

Contrary to what Luskin believes, the New York Times knew and said on August 28 that Hurricane Katrina was headed for New Orleans. Everyone with a brain knew Hurricane Katrina was coming. Even Bush knew that Hurricane Katrina was headed for New Orleans. See:

Comments

[c.]

when's that picture from?

[pgl]

I guess this proves it. Luskin does not know how to read!

[ken]

Does being the stupidest man alive mean anything anymore?

Hasn't Bush proven that success is no longer inconsistent with incompetence?

Seriously? Where does intellegence and competence matter any more, except perhaps on the atheletic field?

In a country as wealthy as ours is meritocracy a legitimate metric. I don't see it.

[One Salient Oversight]

Hi all,

Many apologies for using this comments thread to promote my own work, but:

"Storm of Ideologies follows Katrina" - an examination of how neoliberalism is beginning to lose its charm.

http://one-salient-oversight.blogspot.com/2005/09/storm-of-ideologies-follows-katrina.html

Feel free to read and make comments.

[MTC]

Chapter title: "Catastrophic Disasters Require Presidential Involvement"

"Presidential leadership creates a powerful,meaningful perception that the federal government recognizes an event is catastrophic, is in control, and is going to use every means necessary to meet the immediate mass care needs of disaster victims. Furthermore, presidential leadership when the federal government is not engaged in responding to a catastrophic disaster creates an ongoing sense of the importance of emergency management responsibilities; this translates into a better commitment to preparedness and response by all the federal agencies involved."

Source: GAO Report to Congress #93-138
"Disaster Management: Improving the Nation's Response to Natural Disasters"
Date: July 23, 1993
http://archive.gao.gov/t2pbat5/149631.pdf

Read it and scream.

[MTC]

Apologies: the correct item number for the document excerpted above post is GAO 93-186.

[theorajones]

The picture above says more than simply "he knew," when you compare it to the photo taken before the much smaller hurricane Irene hit. Of course, Irene hit in September when he (and the Vice-President, Secreatary of State, and Secretary of Defense) was not on vacation.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/09/images/20030917_p33594-12a-515h.html

Can anyone look at these two side by side and seriously suggest that the President and his Administration were the least bit competent in leading the response to Katrina?

[Brad DeLong]

Picture is from Sunday August 28: Bush briefed on Hurricane Katrina via videoconference.

[STS]

It doesn't look to me like Luskin is arguing that people didn't know a hurricane was coming -- only that the scope of the disaster wasn't obvious to everyone. That isn't really contradicted by a little A14 squib in the NYT or a picture of Bush getting a weather report.

But I share the feeling that Luskin is trying to push something inconvenient down the memory hole. I can't cite specific news clips, but "everyone" in my corner of the universe did go to bed Sunday night with the distinct impression that something really epically dire could happen in New Orleans when Katrina made landfall.
(And I don't know anybody from NO or even anywhere near by.)

We all were relieved when the news Monday morning said, "disaster didn't materialize". Then somewhat later, the realization that the disaster actually did occur.

Count on the right to try to hypnotize us with "nobody anticipated it, nobody anticipated it, nobody anticipated it ..."

[derek]

But if nobody anticipated a disaster, doesn't that mean that Republicans who condemn the survivors to death because "it's their own fault, they knew the disaster was coming and didn't leave" are even more monstrous liars (or lying monsters) than they were before Luskin's claim?

I didn't think it was possible for them to be bigger monsters than before.

[robert waldmann]

Brad I am sick sick of seeing photographs of broad screen flat panel displays. Oh wait the one that was shown over and over was the one some guy was looting, not the one that warned the President before he decided to stay on vacation, cut a cake and strum a guitar.

Come on am, one should not pass on claims about which articles were in the New York Times on a given day without checking. It takes one minute to check. If one makes a false claim of fact (even one picked up from the Nations Neuro Blog of Record) because one did not devote a minute to checking it, one is an idiot.

Or perhaps am is suggesting that there is another candidate in the running who goes by the moniker neuro conservative (because he has only one neuron ?). Good point. Given the evidence presented today Luskin might be tied for stupidest man alive. However, he was way ahead of neuro conservative a week ago and is clearly holding on to first place.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/07/national/nationalspecial/07warn.html

September 7, 2005

Urgent Warning Proved Prescient
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Among a steady string of warnings delivered in recent years to New Orleans that they could be devastated by a great hurricane, one of the last was also one of the most chilling.

"Hurricane Katrina. A most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength," was the headline on the National Weather Service bulletin on Aug. 28, the day before Hurricane Katrina struck.

"Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer," the alert went on.

It read like the kind of hastily typed dispatch one might expect from a meteorologist facing the storm of a lifetime and trying to ensure that leaders and citizens heeded warnings and moved to safety before all communications failed.

Yet it was mostly written years in advance, with just a few last-minute adjustments by the staff at the New Orleans office to reflect specific local conditions, federal weather agency officials said yesterday....

[froggie]

The international news agency I work for prepared that Saturday, Aug 27 to send someone to New Orleans and then dispatched her on Sunday as the hurricane strengthened. There was no way we were more prescient than NYT or any others. We knew, they knew, Bush knew, everyone knew .. except Luskin, who was probably still trying to show how a deep double deficit is an economic "family value".

[howard]

at risk of repeating something that i've posted here before, nonetheless...

i was in new orleans for a family funeral the weekend before Katrina hit. We left on Tuesday, and by Tuesday, there was already talk in the air that Katrina could be the big one (as a result, we had lunch at Galatoire's en route to the airport!). That's the day FEMA should have started to plan for the worst.

There was news every day after that concerning Katrina, its strength, and whether it was going to hit New Orleans or not, and yes, by the time we went to bed on Sunday, we didn't know if New Orleans would still be there on Monday.

Now it's entirely possible that an idiot like Luskin, busy looking for evidence of Paul krugman's perfidy, missed all of this coverage, but still....

[nick]

The day before Katrina made landfall, www.spiegel.de, one of Germany's top news web sites, led with a story that warned of a possible levee breach and the kind of destruction it would mean for New Orleans.