Thanks for the link.

Unbelievable.

I swear I posted this a minute ago...but it's not there:

Peter,
Thanks for the links. It's good to know. I spoke too quickly & I apologize.

-Zeke

Quote:
I think there's a lot of blame to be placed

I can't disagree with that.

They are asking very direct questions on CNN of Bush Sr. and Clinton, they have no answers. Wow, they are in fujll spin mode.

Don't forget though, that the city was actually missed by the storm, it was the breaking of the levee's that is causing the situation in New Orleans now. The mistake of not having those levee's able to withstand the overflow is a way bigger question. That said, the rest of the Gulf Coast is being completely ignored in the news coverage. There are inland small cities which are completely devastated and have no way to let people know they need help. Read some of the posts on the NOLA.com weblog:
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/..._09.html#075810

Edit: I'm not one to defend this administration, but all the reports i've seen are that FEMA had stuff in place and was prepped for the situation the day the hurricane hit, but the ensuing disaster no one was prepared for.

CNN is really hammering how f'ed up the response has been and asking good questions.... at least Cafferty is. "What role did race and class play in the Crisis"? I've been asking this myself.... and i say A LOT.

FEMA director Michael Brown has some good answers to the criticisms without spin or disregard.

Yeah. I'm trying to imagine that interview:

Quote:
Well, I've watched a lot of Irwin Allen films.

I don't understand this story ("School buses used to evacuate"), where Governor Blanco says they want to do the evacuation without disrupting schools. What's wrong with "School's out. All school-bus drivers in Louisiana: drive to your schools, get your kids home early, then get yo' ass the hell down to New Orleans. If you can get the kids home with fewer buses than you've got, get the rest of the buses the hell down to New Orleans now. People are dying down there"?

Hurricanes happen. Even levee breaches happen, at least with Category 4. But all this Mad Max Beyond Superdome shit should never, ever, have been allowed to happen. Where's the Dunkirk of little boats? Where is the United States Marine Corps?

Peter

Blanco is going to catch a lot of flack for this... and she knows it... you can see the guilt on her face. It's interesting that the FEMA guys keep saying they are there at the serivce of the state gov't and will do whatever they are told. As much as the Fed is to blame for the lack of timely response... It's looking like the state sov't is probably more responsible for not calling for the needed help earlier.

WOW... wow, they have a live caller from the convention center on cnn.
he's saying there's 3k people there, and there's no organization at all
5 or 6 police
not doing anything
mayor told them to go to the dome or to the convention center
and they've been there 3 days
with no one to tell them what to do or where to go
no help no food
wow. this guys report is unreal
[censored]
and they are putting him on live with the head of FEMA
holy hell
amazing
see... he's just saying that they are just now learning from the STATE about the convention center
That's amazing. That's the huge problem... the lack of communication. FEMA didn't even KNOW there were that many people in the convention center waiting for them! Don't they [censored] have CNN? Jesus.

Read the stuff I've posted on my weblog: http://www.underachievers.com. Stuff from my Dad who works at LSU. It's neither here nor there right now, but it's sad how scared the residents of Baton Rouge, my home town, are. My friends parents and my parents are seeing the demise of their city in a completely different way.

Great blog. I just wish the news could be better. For some strange reason, this photo made me feel a little better at least.

It's crazy how rumors spread in situations like this. The news of violence or crime in BR from the displaced from NO is apparently rumors. The police department is saying it's not true. I don't doubt racism is playing a role in a lot of this. Ugh. Not pretty.

Here's a link to a site that has quicktime footage of the Anderson Cooper interview I was talking about:

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/01.html#a4740

edit: damn, link not working. I'll try and capture it from my tivo.

edit: working now.

Quote:
You quote political blogs being political about this as justification for politics being inserted into this?

Actually, the majority of those are news items, not political blogs. All raise points that the politics of Bush contributed to the fact that the situation is as bad as it is. I'd say that makes it political, wouldn't you.

Quote:
Even the New York Times is sensible enough to note that global warming didn't cause this hurricane. To say otherwise is not only unprovable, it's unlikely.

Hey, conservatives don't even believe global warming exists, remember? In any event, you are wrong, one of the major predicted effects of global warming is an increase in the intensity of storms, and recent studies are bearing that out. It is provable, and is likely.

Quote:
Using a tragedy like tthis as opportunity to further a political agenda is tasteless.

No, it's not. It's the perfect time to show that the policies of the administration are causing human suffering, while that suffering is fresh in your mind. Most are ignoring how our foreign policy has caused suffering in other countries for too long, maybe seeing suffering here in our country well finally hit home to some people how the U.S.'s myopic policies are helping to destabilze and destroy the world. Maybe, just maybe, it will sink in for some people now.

A belated Katrina post. I find myself posting little more than occasional snippets lately because I don't have anything good to say about anything...or maybe there's just nothing *left* to say. So mostly I just hang out in my middle-class, hurricane-free existence.

Over the years the people at the National Hurricane Center (and other involved meteorological types) have taken a lot of grief for alarmist forecasts or hurricane forecasting that didn't pan out. I suspect that Katrina will be looked back upon as their finest hour. My cable still not disconnected, I will say I was a bit mesmerized by Kat as she marched on. (I've been in smaller hurricanes before and some of them were almost -- dare I say? -- fun. They are vivid memories in any event.). Anyhow, Katrina followed the predicted track as if on rails.

I was optimistic. The mayor, Nagin, seemed to have a pretty sober, practical grasp of the situation. Maybe he still does.

It is almost bizarre -- not funny but almost absurdly, sadly amusing -- to recall some sighs and pronouncements of relief as Katrina veered a bit to the east. "Hah! Missed me!" And it is amazing to have the tornadic lion's fury fade away only to watch the city killed by the aqueous equivalent of a subdued snake in the grass.

When a few officials started making comparisons to Hiroshima and the Christmas Tsunami, that made me a little unhappy. Will 100,000 or 300,000 people die? Not hardly. That being said, watching what has unfolded -- and I have been pretty glued to my despised network news -- means more to me in sad terms than the tsunami. My country.

Early on, with Katrina bearing down, I thought "Looks like this is going to hurt bad, but think of the resources we have to bring to bear."

If anybody has ever participated in disaster exercises, maybe you've had the same sense that I have of play acting and a certain degree of optimistic thinking -- "Hey, they told us we had to black tag two people but other than that it's a nice day for an exercise!"

I get the feeling that either agencies had a long bout of optimistic thinking or just maybe didn't follow engineering studies through to their worst-case conclusion.

I heard on TV that -- what? -- 20 percent or 25 percent of New Orleans residents live below the poverty line. I need to back up and compare that to other large cities. I mean, I guess I knew that. New Orleans always had an association to me with southern poverty, and my sense was that it wasn't the safest place to roam around, either.

OK, those planners *really* didn't follow a Katrina model to its logical, below-sea-level, conclusion. Like how do maybe 100,000 people without means get out of town?

In fairness, I am not always sure what to expect of some elements of our federal government, diminished and underfunded or not. How big is FEMA? How many full time staff would it take to *really* take on Katrina's aftermath aggressively? Are we willing to pay for another 50,000 FEMA staffers who hang out between disasters? Hey, maybe we could cross-train them with the TSA!

That being said, it sure looks like the preparation and response -- given what was known or should have been known from the engineering, meteorological, and social/political perspective -- has been *really* pathetic. All that comes now -- promises of more money and more troops -- doesn't seem like it will erase a lot of dark, negative pages of history.

I'm listening to a guy named McHale on CNN say "Over the next three days..." how many more troops will arrive. I see the assault ship Bataan has arrived with a few helicopters. Did they bring the amphibious tracks that would have been a great help on day two, or are those all in Iraq?

I remember so may public service ads for the National Guard over the years. images of weekend warriors filling sandbags, rescuing people. OK, we see some of that, but relative to the freight train that could be seen on doppler radar, somebody either dialed the phone too late or the people on the other end were out of town.

This would have been very, very bad in any event -- think of the thousands of people who are now homeless. Good grief, what are the thousands of people who escaped doing? Where are they sleeping? But so much more disheartening -- complete inability of the bureaucracy to even begin to offer some solace to most prominent concentrations of tragedy. The convention center, for example. I didn't see people there beating up or shooting reporters. I saw a bunch of overheated, tired, poor people screaming "Help!"

So now we are behind this curve. There are bad people in New Orleans. This being the USA, plenty of guns, too. So when McHale's promised troops arrive, it won't be to assert control, it will be to regain it. If I were a young black male with innocent intentions, I would keep my head down.

After reading Jim's post (thanks Jim) I again feel there is decency left to discuss this in human terms and leave politics out. I decided to remove my post and include it as an attachment instead. I probably should have just deleted it and let it go but then the last 30 or some minutes of typing would have been in vain.

OK, I ranted extensively (off-board) early today about looting and so forth, and now I have mostly worked out a lot of my negativity.

So, I'd like to veer this thread a little back toward the more positive side for a little bit.

A lot of people have been showing compassion and trying to help in whatever way they can.

Amazon and Google have their donation links on the front page just like they did after the tsunami.

Houston has cleared the Astrodome schedule through December to take 20,000 people in there. San Antonio has volunteered to take on several thousand more refugees. Texas has agreed to provide school for the displaced children and is waiving its maximum class size laws for the duration.
Banks are letting people skip (or defer) payments in order to keep them out of bankruptcy.

Yes, it is a major disaster there. Yes, there is a tremendous amount of pain, suffering, chaos, and occasional displays of humanity's worst behavior. But there is also heroism, and sacrifice, and compassion.

I'm not going to let a few profiteering gas station owners in Atlanta, or a few gun-toting lowlife looters spoil my whole outlook on the world.

And I'm probably going to wait at least another week before I run around proclaiming that every problem in the entire universe from the hangnail on my little toe to the eventual death of our sun is the sole and exclusive fault of one little man who was recently vacationing on a ranch ringed by screaming protestors.

There's plenty of blame to go around, people.

I got to listen to 8 years of people blaming Clinton for their scratched CDs or their bulging waistlines or their fallen soufflés. Now, I get to listen to 8 years of people blaming Bush for their scoliosis, their poor flower-arranging skills, and the impending heat death of the universe.

.