Katrina's POLITICAL aftermath (keep the political discussions HERE)

Look at the reporters who are "incensed" by the rampant looting. Look at the smugness from those distant from the situation who chastise the dumb southerners for not evacuating when they had the chance. It blows their minds how many idiots stayed to wait it out. It makes them shake their heads and make "tsk-tsk" noises into their shiny microphones.

Well, fuck the lot of them.

New Orleans and Biloxi are not rich cities. They are poor southern cities disproportionately filled with poor southern people -- people who may not have reliable transportation, people who live hand-to-mouth, people who have nowhere else to go, even if they had the means to get there.

And the evacuation was little more than a vague order to get the hell out -- under your own power and at your own expense. If you have, at your immediate disposal, reliable transportation, money for gas, and either distant family OR money for shelter, then this isn't a big deal. Of course you leave. You pack up everything you can and you head for higher ground. But it is somewhat less easy to do if you are lacking any one of these things, AND you have been informed that what little earthly lot you may claim is about to be destroyed. Do you hang on and try to save what you can? Do you let it go and return to less than nothing?

What the hell do you do?

and then in the comments

The last time my brother had to evacuate Florida for a week or so it ran him about $1000. He couldn't really afford it but had no choice. Hotels jacked up their prices. Gas was nearly impossible get. They spent 17 hours stuck in traffic to travel a distance that would normally take 7. They ended up holed up in a small hotel because they lucked into a room.

We have a Disaster Assistance Response Team specializing in water purification and medical treatment (DART was recently sent to Indonesia following the Tsunami), shipments of drugs and (for what it's worth) the Canadian Military all "on standby".

I just don't understand why we're not acting yet. Why hasn't any U.S. officials directed our resources anywhere. And failing that why hasn't DART just headed down on their own?

I guess maybe just showing up without the aid of U.S. coordination might be stepping on some toes and a tad chaotic - but when we've been offering our help for days i don't understand why it hasn't been sent anywhere.

There is a serious emergency going on and it seems the admin has a "Ya, thanks. We'll let you know" sort of attitude. And, for the most part, we're just twiddling our thumbs up here. It's kind of bothering me.

Mayor Nagin blasted federal relief efforts as woefully inadequate and said the initial slow response to rising floodwaters was the cause of unnecessary deaths over the past four days.

In an interview broadcast on New Orleans radio station WWL-AM last night, an angry Nagin said federal officials, including President Bush, were too slow to respond to the city's worsening problems — both as flooding worsened on Tuesday as a key drainage canal caved in near the city's lakefront and later as thousands of desperate people waited for buses to get out of the collapsing city yesterday.

"They are feeding the people a line of bull, and they are spinning and people are dying," Nagin said.

the fema head's behavior has been reprehensible in all of his public statements, most of which were denials!

as far as political fallout goes, the president gets the most of the "break it/bought it" logic, but everyone looks complicit in this failure because the sweeping change from dept of interior to homeland security was rubberstamped by both parties to streamline internal issues like this!

All this was minutes after Carol Costello was almost breaking down on air.

xpost: http://www.crooksandliars.com/

'It's awful down here'

Knight Ridder staff and wire services

New Orleans continued to sink into chaos and lawlessness, as gunfire, explosions and fire were reported overnight. People have reportedly fired at police.

Ragtag armies of the desperate and hungry begged for help, corpses rotted along flooded sidewalks and bands of armed thugs thwarted fitful rescue efforts as Americans watched the Big Easy dissolve before their eyes.

About 4:35 this morning, a series of massive explosions rocked the riverfront a few miles south of the French Quarter. The cause of the blasts or the extent of any possible damage was not immediately known.

An initial explosion sent flames of red and orange shooting into the pre-dawn sky. A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke that could be seen even in the dark. The vibrations were felt all the way downtown.

The explosions appeared to originate close to the east bank of the Mississippi River, near a residential area and rail tracks. At least two police boats were at the scene.

Despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, a $10.5 billion recovery bill in Congress and a relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history, the chaos spred.

Congress was rushing though a $10.5 billion aid package, the Pentagon promised 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting and President Bush planned to visit the region. But city officials were seething with anger about what they called a slow federal response to the catastrophe.

"I need reinforcements," Mayor Ray Nagin said Thursday night on WWL-AM. "I need troops, man. I need 500 buses, man. This is a national disaster. This is a major, major, major deal. And I can't emphasize it enough. It's awful down here, man."

Saying he would probably get in big trouble after his interview, Nagin ripped at President Bush. "We have an incredible crisis here and his flying over in Air Force One does not do it justice.

"Excuse my French - everybody in America - but I am pissed."

"This is a national disgrace," said New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert. "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."

At the hot and stinking Superdome, where tens of thousands were being evacuated by bus to Houston, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.

Houston's Astrodome, which had been taking Superdome refugees for the past day, is full and cannot take more people, officials say. It accepted more than 11,000 people and began sending buses to other area shelters and as far away as Huntsville, about an hour north of Houston.

The state of Texas agreed Thursday to take in three times more refugees from Hurricane Katrina than officials initially expected, bringing the total number of evacuees to nearly 75,000.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that 50,000 more refugees would relocate to Texas, with plans to house 25,000 each in San Antonio and Dallas.

Ellen Dunkel of Knight Ridder Digital contributed to this report.

Well yeah, it is intentional to a point. Incompetence at various levels is obviously part of the problem, but at least as far as the Buwh people go, that incompetence is partly a function of their ideology. The conservative mantra that "government is not the answer" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you underfund it enough while also treating it primarily as a vehicle for the pursuit of a narrow set of aims on behalf of a narrow set of people, you're going to be left with a hobbled goliath -- the "starved beast" of Grover Norquist's wet dreams -- run by people whose default position is that "government is the problem, not the solution." As others have pointed out (and as should have already been abundantly clear in the muddled domestic response to Sept. 11), these guys just don't take governing seriously.

(btw, on the BBC world service, they just read an email from an American listener who said the real problem was the "failed social policies" of the '60s and '70s, which had trapped all those people in dependent poverty. Because, you know, there was no poverty in America until LBJ invented it.)

"Did the Iraqi people ask for help?"

where's that national discussion we were going to have about infrastructure and preparedness after the Northeast Blackout?

Googleproof if you need to, but who was it? Cause here's what Goldberg just said:

I do agree with many readers that the real first responders in New Orleans failed. Some no doubt tried their best, others were too busy looting. I can understand the frustration of the Mayor, but this guy is pretty clearly not up to the job. Maybe no mayor would be given the nature of the calamity and the resources available. But this guy's complaints ring just a bit too self-serving for me. New Orleans has had rotten political leadership for decades and they simply cannot be allowed to point to Washington and say "it's all their fault!"

i dunno. remember, we have an Admin who will bar you from asking any questions if they don't like you. that's what happenned to Helen Thomas 4 1/2 years ago when she asked the first hard question(a tradition she'd had since Harry Truman in the 40s). THey moved her to the back of the room and the AP had to let her go, since she was completely neutered as a reporter. They can cut any access they want. These guys have been in full Soviet mode for years...

some of the harsh tv folks lately have just finally stopped caring about their jobs just enough to actually do them.

I am a great believer in foot-in-mouth disease and wish to expose it so we may all understand it.

jesus...I hadn't thought of that...I suppose they ground all other aircraft. God, this keeps getting worse and worse. This is shameful.

HARRY CONNICK JR. can get to the Convention Center to help. ANDERSON COOPER and TUCKER CARLSON can access all of these areas. Fuck, ARTHEL NEVEL OF A CURRENT AFFAIR can access all of these areas. I mean, I know I'm just venting at this point but we have half a mind to head down there ourselves loaded with supplies this weekend, because it's pretty fucking obvious that no one in the government went on, like, Yahoo! Maps and got directions to New Orleans or Biloxi, cos they ain't getting near it. Maybe they got their directions from Google Maps, those ones were confusin looking.

xpost - maura otm. ned, dude, you really pay way too much attention to that guy than he actually deserves.

naw she worked for upi, i thought.

Gallows humor a go-go!

It's just that I was watching the local news here in DC last night, and some police department here (forget which county) got a phone call from an official in New Orleans, asking if they can help with supplies and efforts, so of course they said yes, loaded up trucks with gatorade and food and stuff, and then made the mistake of trying to go through FEMA to get approval to go down there. They were still waiting as of newscast last night, because FEMA was WAITING FOR A WRITTEN REQUEST TO COME IN FROM NEW ORLEANS GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS.

OH RIGHT LET ME JUST FAX THAT TO YOU RIGHT NOW. Douchebags.

xpost OK I mean I just xposted a ton, this Condi Rice thing is getting kind of stupid