Katrina's aftermath

Yes, Baton Rouge. They evacuated there early yesterday.

say, anybody remember hearing two years ago about how, due to the shortage of armor, U.S. troops in Iraq were being allowed to "modify" humvees? i read rumors about how some of them took the opportunity to do full-on Mad Max jobs, but I never saw any photos of the results(assuming they'd ever get published).

"I can't wait to see the S. Korean Army on the streets of New Orleans keeping the peace."

"I for one think the Bush family and the Saudis should come help. After all, they have our Rent-A-Army over there..."

Now, this says to me that the viewers are very cynical. It also suggests that these are the only e-mails CNN has to run, which means that much of the country is a negative nancy when it comes to the Bush admin. and the prospect of foreign help...

Official Search and Rescue Center at the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness

[...]

Cell phone communication is extremely limited, but Text messaging on Verizon, Cingular and Sprint networks appear to be working.

Huh, guess where I have plans to be this weekend?

Well, let me join the dogpile. The more I think about that miserable laundry-list speech of his, the madder it makes me. I've been watching cable news and WWL's online stream for the past few days, and Bush's speech was as canned and unrealistic as if it had been phoned in from Mars. All day long, stories of incredible suffering, armed mobs of looters roaming the streets, babies and their mothers in desperate conditions ... and the president rattles off a policy speech in which he stops to thank a Texas county executive? Pod's right: the continued viability of his presidency depends on how he handles this thing. It will take nothing for the "Bush doesn't care" meme to circulate through the culture, especially as desperate Louisiana people start to grumble about all the Louisiana National Guardsmen serving over in Iraq instead of helping their own families and neighbors who have nothing.

They're running a couple of letters from people trying to argue differently almost as if they're fishing for them. It's a bizarre meltdown.

Bad conclusion. Imagine two gas stations across the street from one another. One selling unleaded for $2.49, the other selling unleaded for $2.79. Is the second one price-gouging? No. What happened is the first station is still selling the gas they bought four days ago. The second station ran out of the supply of gas they bought five days ago, and had to buy more gas yesterday. Gas prices went up 30 cents the day before yesterday, so the second station has to sell their gas for 30 cents more a gallon to clear the same profit.

That's not even taking into account the normal variation in price depending on location. Gas stations don't all pay the same rent just because they all sell gas.

Subtract the water, and rewind to April 29th, 1992...
The place is Los Angeles.

http://images.ibsys.com/2002/0426/1420892.jpg

"Hi, ny name is Reginald De... OW!"

Jesus, you look under the lowest sewer and they're still somewhere beneath, smirking.

They hit the freeway and were stopped by police. There was a wheelchair on top.

I'm sorry, I'd have to let them go. Its not like the USPS is expecting to get those back.

http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/info/1906/images/damage6.jpg

*COUGH*

edit: the governor of the Parish of St. Bernard is begging on WWL for help from anyone for boats, food, and water. Its horrifying.

This, however, is probably the first time most of us have seen an American city undergo attrition due to natural causes in our lifetimes, though.

i am sorry but that just about gave me a heart attack. can you imagine?

I had to go to a doctor's appointment in Atlanta today, and it took me three hours to drive back to my suburban home (it normally takes 20-30 minutes!) thanks to people lining up at gas stations like it's 1973

Makes sense.

The dirty bomb would be nothing like this. No one would stay. They'd just get the fuck out pronto before dying. There's really no terrorist comparison to this, short of a city getting 24 hours warning that it was going to be destroyed in some way, and then the terrorists went ahead and destroyed it.

I just got off the phone with a guy who evacuated with three other families from Jefferson Parish. They planned to be gone for three days. Now, it's three months. He was pretty level-headed, but I could tell that he could see a breaking point somewhere distantly in the horizon.

He knows that he's lucky. He's out of town and he's got a room at a hotel. But the money has to be watched. He described how he and his family went and hung out at the mall for the afternoon, just to get away from the hotel room and television. How surreal it was to be standing around the food court of some mall in North Little Rock while his home was underwater.

And he's got weeks of this, at least, to look forward to. I asked him what else besides food and shelter he and his fellow refugees might need, and his immediate answer was JOBS. Jobs so that the immediate money worry wouldn't be so bad, but also to alleviate boredom. To feel like a human.

I didn't know what to tell him. I felt like I was watching someone about to choke and I don't know CPR. I know about the property damage and the rescue costs and of course all of the lives that have been lost, but there's also going to be some emotionally torn people all over this country for quite some time. I just wonder how we all are going to deal with this.

Merry Christmas.

dear netherlands: send us your best pump-building manpower.

TWO TIMES!