The Tennessee Liberal

This article from the Salt Lake Tribune shows the utter lunacy of the Bush response to Katrina. We have more than 1,000 firefighters whose skills are being completely squandered:

Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.

Now, before you go off half-cocked about how we need to communicate with the victims, wait. As someone who communicates for a living, I couldn't agree more. But look at the last grafs of this story:

Firefighters say they want to brave the heat, the debris-littered roads, the poisonous cottonmouth snakes and fire ants and travel into pockets of Louisiana where many people have yet to receive emergency aid.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

It's a two-pronged travesty: First, these brave people volunteered to be in harm's way and use their skills to help the victims of Katrina. Now they are being used as a human backdrop for a President who just doesn't get it. Second, not only are their skills being wasted for FEMA, they are not in their hometowns where their vital training can be put to use.

When will George Bush and his horse magnate-cum-disaster chief Michael Brown get it? This is not just another stage-managed event. People's lives continue to hang in the balance.

(Hat tip to kos.)