Bizarroworld Katrina

In September of 2005, Barack Obama was a young senator from the state of Illinois, which didn’t suffer a direct hit from Katrina. But that didn’t stop him from traveling to Houston with Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, to spend time with Katrina refugees there. See? There’s a picture!

Here’s another one, where SENATOR Obama is holding a youngster, unlike Donald Trump, who did not hold youngsters or visit with refugees in Corpus Christi on Tuesday, but instead modeled his fucking “USA” hat and yammered about about how “WATER IS THE BIGGEST” and bragged about how many hurricane survivors came to see him speak.

I just got back from a trip to Houston with former Presidents Clinton and Bush. And as we wandered through the crowd, we heard in very intimate terms the heart-wrenching stories that all of us have witnessed from a distance over the past several days: mothers separated from babies, adults mourning the loss of elderly parents, descriptions of the heat and filth and fear of the Superdome and the Convention Center. There was an overriding sense of relief, for the officials in Houston have done an outstanding job of creating a clean and stable place for these families in the short-term. But a conversation I had with one woman captured the realities that are settling into these families as they face the future.

She told me “We had nothing before the hurricane. Now we got less than nothing.”

We had nothing before the hurricane. Now we got less than nothing.

In the coming weeks, as the images of the immediate crisis fade and this chamber becomes consumed with other matters, we will be hearing a lot about lessons learned and steps to be taken. I will be among those voices calling for action.