Dumb ass

Wonkette reports on Chertoff’s reading habits:

On Sunday, DHS chief Michael Chertoff told “Meet the Press’s” Tim Russert that one reason for the delay in getting federal aid to Katrina victims was that “everyone” thought the crisis had passed when the storm left: “I remember on Tuesday morning picking up newspapers and I saw headlines, ‘New Orleans Dodged The Bullet.’” We’re wondering what papers the Chertoff household gets, because these are the headlines that greeted most people Tuesday morning:

See more headlines from the Newseum.

They saw it coming

Brian Williams reports this weather message he received last Sunday (upon arriving in Baton Rouge to begin coverage for NBC):

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

…DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED…

HURRICANE KATRINA…A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH…RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER.

AT LEAST HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED…ALL WINDOWS WILL BE BLOWN OUT.

THE VAST MAJORITY…OF TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.

POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.

It seems to NewMexiKen that mobilization should have begun THEN.

Ticket to ride

I am stunned by an interview I conducted with New Orleans Detective Lawrence Dupree. He told me they were trying to rescue people with a helicopter and the people were so poor they were afraid it would cost too much to get a ride and they had no money for a “ticket.” Dupree was shaken telling us the story. He just couldn’t believe these people were afraid they’d be charged for a rescue.

CNN’s Drew Griffin

Perhaps they will be.

Best line of the day, so far

“Politician after politician — Republican and Democrat alike — has paraded before us, unwilling or unable to shut off the “I-Me” switch in their heads, condescendingly telling us about how moved they were or how devastated they were — congenitally incapable of telling the difference between the destruction of a city and the opening of a supermarket.”

Keith Olbermann

Sensitive soul that she is

Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W.Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, “This is working very well for them.”

The former First Lady’s remarks were aired this evening on National Public Radio’s “Marketplace” program. …

In a segment at the top of the show on the surge of evacuees to the Texas city, Barbara Bush said: “Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we’re going to move to Houston.”

Then she added: “What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.

“And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.”

Editor & Publisher

This pretty much ranks right up there with Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake.” (Allegedly said when she was told the peasants had no bread.)

The Sunken City

Good articles on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina from The New Yorker. Includes a 1987 John McPhee article “The Sunken City.” An excerpt:

The river goes through New Orleans like an elevated highway. Jackson Square, in the French Quarter, is on high ground with respect to the rest of New Orleans, but even from the benches of Jackson Square one looks up across the levee at the hulls of passing ships. Their keels are higher than the AstroTurf in the Superdome, and if somehow the ships could turn and move at river level into the city and into the stadium they would hover above the playing field like blimps.

Poor Taste Alert!

Observations at the club:

• Bare midriffs are stunningly unappealing when the midriff in question is eligible for medicare.
• Thong underwear inappropriately revealed at the wasteline can have all the appeal of a Kotex belt.

He Held Their Lives in His Tiny Hands

In the chaos that was Causeway Boulevard, this group of refugees stood out: a 6-year-old boy walking down the road, holding a 5-month-old, surrounded by five toddlers who followed him around as if he were their leader.

They were holding hands. Three of the children were about 2 years old, and one was wearing only diapers. A 3-year-old girl, who wore colorful barrettes on the ends of her braids, had her 14-month-old brother in tow. The 6-year-old spoke for all of them, and he told rescuers his name was Deamonte Love.

Los Angeles Times

Raquel Welch

… is eligible for full social security benefits today. (She’s 65.)

Jesse James

… was born on this date in 1847.

From the review at Amazon.com of T.J. Stiles’s Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War:

James is often grouped with famous frontier criminals like Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy, but he’s best understood as a Southerner who forged partisan alliances in postwar Missouri and promoted himself as a latter-day Robin Hood. Stiles describes James as “a foul-mouthed killer who hated as fiercely as anyone on the planet” and places his life in the context of “the struggle for–or rather, against–black freedom.” Stiles’s fundamental point about James is as startling as it is convincing: “In his political consciousness and close alliance with a propagandist and power broker, in his efforts to win media attention with his crimes … Jesse James was a forerunner of the modern terrorist.”

Just keeping track

AAA reports average price for regular gasoline is $3.05⁷; premium $3.36².

Highest state average (for regular): Maryland $3.26⁰.

Lowest state average: Alaska $2.73⁵.

NewMexiKen bought mid-grade yesterday in Albuquerque for $2.99⁹, but most stations are 10-to-20 cents higher.

1936 prices (11² cents). From The New York Times.

Wal-Mart 1 FEMA -3

Let me give you just three quick examples. We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water, trailer trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA–we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. The Coast Guard said, “Come get the fuel right away.” When we got there with our trucks, they got a word. “FEMA says don’t give you the fuel.” Yesterday–yesterday–FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards on our line and says, “No one is getting near these lines.” Sheriff Harry Lee said that if America–American government would have responded like Wal-Mart has responded, we wouldn’t be in this crisis.

— Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard on Meet the Press yesterday. From transcript.

Best line of the day, so far

“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.”

Arthur C. Clarke, found at Sideshow.

Race and America

Here’s the bottom line: Race is central to the story of the United States. I didn’t inject that into the narrative. Race is an issue today in NOLA and it was an issue two weeks ago and it has been an issue for roughly four centuries. We had a war over it. We had a century of Jim Crow and then a Civil Rights movement. Someone tell me when race ceased to matter. Just because your favorite athlete is Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods doesn’t mean you have an exemption from ever thinking about race again. The “colorblind” society is perhaps a noble goal, but it doesn’t exist yet.

Joel Achenbach

Killed by Contempt

Each day since Katrina brings more evidence of the lethal ineptitude of federal officials. I’m not letting state and local officials off the hook, but federal officials had access to resources that could have made all the difference, but were never mobilized.

Here’s one of many examples: The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.

Experts say that the first 72 hours after a natural disaster are the crucial window during which prompt action can save many lives. Yet action after Katrina was anything but prompt. Newsweek reports that a “strange paralysis” set in among Bush administration officials, who debated lines of authority while thousands died.

The above begins today’s column by Paul Krugman, who conludes:

That contempt, as I’ve said, reflects a general hostility to the role of government as a force for good. And Americans living along the Gulf Coast have now reaped the consequences of that hostility.

The administration has always tried to treat 9/11 purely as a lesson about good versus evil. But disasters must be coped with, even if they aren’t caused by evildoers. Now we have another deadly lesson in why we need an effective government, and why dedicated public servants deserve our respect. Will we listen?