It’s a little difficult to see much — and some areas are blacked out altogether — but Google Maps has satellite photos taken of New Orleans on Wednesday, August 31.
Category: Issues of the Day
Best line of the day, period
“Mr. Altshuler and Mr. Rhode had worked in the White House’s Office of National Advance Operations. Those are the people who decide where the president will stand on stage and which loyal supporters will be permitted into the audience – and how many firefighters will be diverted from rescue duty to surround the president as he patrols the New Orleans airport trying to look busy.”
— Excerpted from editorial in The New York Times
Best line of the day, so far
“Would that FEMA could move as fast as the nation’s self-pimping celebrities!”
He knew the rules
According to AP, “A judge on Thursday ordered Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s national security adviser, to pay a $50,000 fine for illegally taking classified documents from the National Archives.”
NewMexiKen is telling you, don’t mess with my former colleagues at the National Archives. They take their records responsibilities seriously (as did I).
Yup!
You can blame politicians for New Orleans all you like. I know I certainly will, starting right up at the top. But we just had a nationwide election and it turned on issues that were as inconsequential as they were passionately argued. President Bush is in office today because a bunch of voters in Ohio don’t like homosexuals very much. Members of Congress are enjoying another few years of decent salaries and preferred parking because they brought home the bacon to fill potholes and build sports stadiums.
And we, the people, keep putting them back in office because its easier to do that than it is to pay attention. I know people who can’t name their own Senators but can expound at insane length and in appalling detail about UFOs. There are tens of millions of American’s who’ve never set foot in a polling place. Our media, which exist entirely to give us what we want, spend more energy on Paris Hilton than they do on the very real possibility that New Orleans might disappear one day.
And here we are.
Irresponsible
CHEYENNE — With gasoline prices hovering near $3 a gallon, U.S. Rep. Barbara Cubin has offered support for legislation that would suspend the federal fuel tax to provide relief for motorists and help blunt a possible economic downturn.
“Unfortunately, Congress can’t wave a magic wand to fix overnight the fundamental supply and demand problems that are driving gas prices upward,” Cubin, R-Wyo., said in a release. “The energy bill addresses those problems, but it will take time. What we can do is offer some immediate relief by suspending the gas tax to alleviate the short term crisis caused by Hurricane Katrina.”
Under the legislation, the 18.4-cent-per-gallon tax would be suspended indefinitely and require an act of Congress to reinstate. A second measure Cubin is backing would temporarily suspend the tax for 30 days.
Hello, the gasoline tax all goes into the highways trust fund. Anyone think we shouldn’t be repairing roads? How about I-10 across Louisiana and Mississippi?
But even if you buy 30 gallons of gasoline a week, eliminating the tax would only save you $5.52.
The price of gasoline has gone up 40 cents or more a gallon since before Katrina. The tax has remained the same since 1997, when gas cost $1.20 a gallon. How about asking the oil companies to reduce prices 18.4 cents instead?
Today, we’ll try to speak so slowly that even professors can follow
The Daily Howler takes on the liberals.
Update: Thursday’s Daily Howler is worth reading as well.
Enough!
Read a report from The Salt Lake Tribune on what’s happening to firefighters.
Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers.
Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA.
On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency.
Fifty (THAT’S 50!) firefighters were “ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew’s first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.”
“Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.” Arthur C. Clarke
America’s Finest News Source
There is nothing funny about the disaster that Katrina left in its wake.
Even so, The Onion has some perceptive headlines:
God Outdoes Terrorists Yet Again
Officials Uncertain Whether To Save Or Shoot Victims
Nation’s Politicians Applaud Great Job They’re Doing
Area Man Drives Food There His Goddamned Self
Bush: ‘It Has Been Brought To My Attention That There Was Recently A Bad Storm’
Louisiana National Guard Offers Help By Phone From Iraq
Government Relief Workers Mosey In To Help
Refugees Moved From Sewage-Contaminated Superdome To Hellhole Of Houston
White Foragers Report Threat Of Black Looters
Another Saints Season Ruined Before It Begins
Shrimp Joint Now Shrimp Habitat
Bush Urges Victims To Gnaw On Bootstraps For Sustenance
This Song Goes Out to You, Big Easy
For hundreds of thousands of listeners of about 225 public radio stations and XM Satellite Radio, Mr. Spitzer and “American Routes” have served since 1997 as the voice of New Orleans, right down to the theme music by Professor Longhair. Now, working with a patchwork staff from a borrowed studio in Lafayette, La., Mr. Spitzer is assembling this weekend’s show, titled “After the Storm.” (… A list of other stations is at www.americanroutes.org.) “I wanted it to be music of reflection and solace and also hope.”
— From an article in The New York Times
Oops!
Add geography to the growing list of FEMA fumbles.
A South Carolina health official said his colleagues scrambled Tuesday when FEMA gave only a half-hour notice to prepare for the arrival of a plane carrying as many as 180 evacuees to Charleston.
But the plane, instead, landed in Charleston, West Virginia, 400 miles away.
— CNN.com
Link via FunctionalAmbivalent
The eyes have it
The Albuquerque Tribune has a great photo with the following caption:
Mr. McMillen, who declined to give his first name, peers at would-be rescuers from his third-floor apartment in a New Orleans housing project. Although reluctant, he was eventually persuaded to leave the flooded area by a rescue crew that included Bernalillo County deputies and Fire Department personnel. McMillen didn’t know what year it was and thought Gerald Ford was still president. He was evacuated, along with three other stranded residents of the building, by airboat on Monday. (Photo by Craig Fritz/Tribune)
Magic Marker Strategy
Instead of relying on a “Good Samaritan” policy – the fantasy in New Orleans that everyone would take care of the neighbors – the Virginia rescue workers go door to door. If people resist the plea to leave, Mr. Judkins told The Daily Press in Newport News, rescue workers give them Magic Markers and ask them to write their Social Security numbers on their body parts so they can be identified.
“It’s cold, but it’s effective,” Mr. Judkins explained.
— John Tierney in The New York Times.
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.
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.”
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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?
How You Can Help The Victims Of Hurricane Katrina
From the Charity Navigator, some advice on giving and a list of places to donate.