Katrina's aftermath

CNN appears to say that the crew is OK:

Underscoring the dangerous nature of the operation, a rescue helicopter crashed northwest of downtown New Orleans Sunday evening. The pilot and crew were rescued, said those aboard another helicopter hovering above just after the crash.

The mangled Eurocopter AS 332 Super Puma was lying on its side about four miles from downtown. The Coast Guard carried the crew from the scene on another helicopter.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/04/katrina.impact/index.html

Who flies Eurocopters? It's hard to tell from the photo on the front of cnn.com if that's a USCG helicopter-- it's pretty bright colored, like some of theirs are.

My boyfriend and I were traveling from Memphis, TN to St. Louis, MO on I-55 this afternoon (5:00p to 9:00p). As we drove north between 5 and 7 p.m., we saw at least 200 vehicles of various types moving south including tankers with fuel and water, medical, humvees, personnel transports, trucks with building supplies, generators, construction equipment, and tow trucks. There were also two trucks with wedge shaped cabs that looked familiar, but I'm not sure what they were exactly. They made me think of bridge builder type vehicles. We also saw a group of Arkansas State Patrol vehicles caravaning south with boats in tow, several groups of ambulances, a caravan of buses and a group from Ameren UE the electric company in St. Louis.

I can't be sure, but I think some of the military vehicles were Army Corp of Engineers from Fort Leonard Wood, MO. They were traveling at a good clip, and hopefully have already arrived in the area. Several of the military vehicles had slogans like "New Orleans or Bust" and "New Orleans We're Coming".

I hope this news helps.

THIS STUFF FRIGGING WELL SHOULD HAVE BEEN BARRELING INTO NEW ORLEANS AS OR JUST AFTER THE DAMN STORM HIT.

OK, the flooding. But come on. Portaloos finally arriving AFTER they move everyone out of the superdome? If I was in NO I'd probably be shooting people out of insane wild anger mself.

This is how i feel about it, I mean Bush was quoted saying “we can afford both the events in Iraq and this”.

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_090105/content/truth_detector.guest.html

Yeh, so I start setting it up even before the hurricane hits, you know, when the state of emergency is declared, not when the inner-beltway starts grumbling.

If Entergy could foresee the damage, why not FEMA?

"Before joining the Bush administration in 2001, Brown spent 11 years as the commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association..."This was his full-time job...for 11 years," [a spokeswoman] added.

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures. "He was asked to resign," Bill Pennington, president of the IAHA at the time, confirmed last night.

Soon after, Brown was invited to join the administration by his old Oklahoma college roommate Joseph Allbaugh, the previous head of FEMA until he quit in 2003 to work for the president's re-election campaign."

It's okay. Pointing out that the head of FEMA is an Arabian Horse specialist who obviously doesn't know how to keep an entire city from drowing does bear repeating.

What do people think? Am I being callous and cold-hearted?

-- Lovelace (futilecrime...), September 4th, 2005.

Honestly, I think this is a silly rationalization. The money is being donated to charities like the Red Cross, not the US government. The people of New Orleans and the gulf coast were largely poor - maybe not tsunami victim poor, but much poorer than most of us.

If you don't want to give money, fine. No one is forcing you. But don't use thin political excuses.

Like everyone's said, you don't HAVE to give money. If you're really reluctant to donate to Salvation Army or Red Cross because of the political ramifications, you could consider giving a little to the Humane Society, since really the government isn't expected to be THAT responsible for the welfare of puppies. The Humane Society is trying to go in and rescue all the abandoned animals, and that would be a good way to still help while keeping to your political reservations.

again, even after all the talk about broken families and destroyed lives, hearing about somebody who lost their dog on TOP of all that that just makes me want to die.

I don't know why, but that's how it is.

Today, I got a letter from a non-work acquaintance who went off on how if the city of New Orleans had "laid off on the Kwanza celebrations and Gay Pride parades, and spent more time building a better fucking levee..." ... and I think that I ruptured a blood vessel in my eye.

It's silly. I know that I'm more or less right about this. If Paula Zahn and Geraldo Riveria can figure it out, then it's not too difficult to see. However, I still feel like a combination of these two guys:

http://www.dvdnett.no/img/i322972494.jpg + http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/character5.article.jpg

5:18 P.M. - NEW YORK (AP): Michael Jackson has written a song to help raise funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and will soon record it.
Tentatively titled, "From the Bottom of My Heart," the singer plans to ask other musicians to join him in recording it.

xpost

holy shit, PP, you're right

Area Man Drives Food There His Goddamned Self

HOUSTON—Evacuees from the overheated, filth-encrusted wreckage of the New Orleans Superdome were bussed to the humid, 110-degree August heat and polluted air of Houston last week, in a move that many are resisting. "Please, God, not Houston. Anyplace but Houston," said one woman, taking shelter under an overpass. "The food there is awful, and the weather is miserable. And the traffic—it's like some engineer was making a sick joke." Authorities apologized for transporting survivors to a city "barely better in any respect," but said the blistering-hot, oil-soaked Texas city was in fact slightly better, and that casualties due to gunfire would be no worse.

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/fema.html

there we go