Discourse.net

They Really Really Don't Care About New Orleans -- US Accepts Repairs to Floodwalls Made of Used Newspaper

The tragedy of New Orleans continues.

4 Investigates: Floodwalls stuffed with newspaper?

the witness says two years ago, he saw the contractor filling the expansion joint or opening between the floodwalls with newspaper.

“The whole length of the wall was stuffed with newspaper.”

And when he confronted the contractor, the contractor blamed Washington for the substandard work.

“He basically told me when Congress sent down the money, it would be repaired the proper way.”

But during a recent trip to the area, two years later, it was apparent that didn’t happen. Much of the newspaper had deteriorated or been eaten by bugs, but some still remained.

And, by the way, Congress had sent the money, and the contract called for a proper rubber joint. The Army Corps of Engineers, which is supposed to supervise the construction, says everything is just fine, nothing to see, move along now.

Does anyone in DC care about this stuff? Or have they just written New Orleans off?

How does an administration get away with presiding over the destruction of a major American city, botching the emergency rescue and then not fixing it afterwards? Sorry — silly question: they do it the same way they get away with a war of choice based on lies, torture, stealing an election, refusals to appear before Congress, signing statements that announce their plans to ignore the laws, and siphoning of several fortunes to their friends.

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”

“A Republic, if you can keep it.”

ATTRIBUTION: The response is attributed to BENJAMIN FRANKLIN—at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation—in the notes of Dr. James McHenry, one of Maryland’s delegates to the Convention.

Still a Republic, or devolved to a revolving monarchy? The next few years may decide it.

Bush Administration *Literally* Makes Americans Sick

The Gavel » Blog Archive » Oversight Hearing on “Toxic Trailers” in the Gulf Coast

Henry Waxman is having hearings about FEMA’s provision of toxic trailers to Katerina victims.

Another FEMA official wrote, the office of general counsel has advised “We do not do testing, because it would imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue.” Early in the process, due to the perseverance of a pregnant mother with a four month old child, FEMA did test one occupied trailer. The results showed that their trailer had formaldehyde levels 75 times higher than the maximum workplace exposure levels recommended by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. The mother evacuated the trailer. FEMA then stopped testing other trailers.

They knew, and they knew they didn’t want to know.

Much more, with videos, at The Gavel.

Failing our Neighbors in St. Bernard Parish

The National Journal's Jonathan Rauch has some compelling reporting about what's doing in St. Bernard Parish, right next door to New Orleans -- and the answer in Struggling To Survive is "not nearly enough".

After that has thoroughly depressed you, visit the sidebar in which Jon argues that the root problem is largely bureaucratic:

Is St. Bernard Parish's bureaucracy fatigue incurable, treatable with smarter bureaucracy, or susceptible only to fundamental reform? The answer is yes -- partially -- to all of the above.

So is this the administration's fault? I'd say even if Jon is right that the statutory climate is unhelpful, there's a lot more that could be done if the line officials were more empowered to get results -- and felt that they would get in more trouble for doing nothing than for doing th wrong thing. And that would come only if they got the right sort of direction from the top.

But who remembers New Orleans nowadays?

Plenty of Blame to Go Around (V)

Read Escapable Logic on a TV reporter's insidious attempt to play the blame game by the old rules -- which are now the wrong rules. It's powerful stuff, with quotes from and links to many other worthies, notably David Weinberger's facts as cudgels, which was probably the place I first saw this incident dissected.

Can it really be that sometimes a truth is greater than the facts on which it was said to rest? It's very rare, but yes -- so long as there are other relevant and supportive facts.

Ordinarily, of course, we rely on the facts to set us free from the chains of falsehood. For example, that hype about anarchy rape and murder in the Superdome? Dead bodies everywhere? Not.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around (IV)

Some of the commentators on this blog have been repeating the GOP talking point that the Mayor of New Orleans didn't order an evacuation until after GW Bush pleaded with him to do so. Not only is this false, but people pushing this line should beware the logical nutcracker of Daily Kos: Where Turd Blossom Goes, A Talking Point Blooms. It turns out that this talking point has a real sting in the tail:

Following the lie, however, we see that in order to even argue the point, you have to agree with a whole litany of other points:

• That President Bush himself, as well as presumably his entire team, knew full well that Katrina was a devastating storm requiring mass evacuations in front of it, and one which would wreak catastrophic damage.
• And yet President Bush, and the rest of his cabinet, remained on vacation while they knew that.
• And yet FEMA was utterly unprepared, apparently, to offer assistance for it.
• And yet Homeland Security did, apparently, nothing to ensure FEMA was prepared to offer assistance for it.
• And yet in spite of apparently knowing the danger to New Orleans in specific, both the President and the administrator of FEMA were completely unaware that anyone had "foreseen" that the levees would fail -- and apparently was only monitoring the levee condition via newspaper headlines.
• And yet, in the days following the storm, the FEMA director insisted that he wasn't even aware 15,000 evacuees had fled to the New Orleans convention center, a designated shelter area, until he was told by reporters.
• And yet, FEMA continued to reject assistance and turn rescuers away during the most critical days after the storm.

So for the sake of argument, fine: let's grant the central premise the White House was following the dangerous progress of Katrina well in advance, and urged evacuations. Let's grant the premise that they were "ready" for this storm, according to the standards that Bush set for himself. On vacation. While receiving ceremonial guitars.

Does that make the now-universally-recognized-as-inadequate administration response better? Or spectacularly worse?

[Just to be clear: I am NOT saying that this settles the question of whether the evacuation was tardy (in hindsight it certainly seems to have been) or well-executed (it wasn't), and most certainly not that it was well-planned. ]

Incidentally, the suggestion in some the comments that the feds had tons of resources ready to go just sitting there on hair trigger notice, waiting only for the incompetent local officials to request them before they would instantly pour in is also ludicrously at odds with reality as reported by any reputable news source with which I am familiar. But I look forward to the report of a fair and independent inquiry to sort truth from fiction.

Spontaneous Generation Observed in Nature

Stuff Which is True and Not at All Funny

Stuff which appears all true, and quite horrible:

• Sickening Beyond Belief. Here's just a small bit:

  In the midst of administering chest compressions to a dying woman several days after Hurricane Katrina struck, Dr. Mark N. Perlmutter was ordered to stop by a federal official because he wasn't registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
  
  "I begged him to let me continue," said Perlmutter, who left his home and practice as an orthopedic surgeon in Pennsylvania to come to Louisiana and volunteer to care for hurricane victims. "People were dying, and I was the only doctor on the tarmac (at the Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport) where scores of nonresponsive patients lay on stretchers. Two patients died in front of me.

• The follow-up posting detailing other examples of the deadly refusal of assistance.
• Meanwhile FEMA still can't get its act together.

PS. Here comes Tropical Storm Rita, soon to be Hurricane Rita. See the details via the University of Miami's cool Google hack that plots hurricane track observations and predicted path. (Note that in this case the track is a little misleading, maybe, as it is quite possible the center will reform farther north during the next 36 hours. That is, right here. Although the real hurricane force may not grow until it hits the Gulf.)

Just Wondering

How much have GW Bush and Barbara Bush personally donated from their millions to hurricane relief funds? And to which funds?

Factchecking Bush

Wow. That didn't take long. Bush gives a press conference this morning and says,

Question: Did they misinform you when you said that no one anticipated the breach of the levees?

President Bush: No, what I was referring to is this. When that storm came by, a lot of people said we dodged a bullet. When that storm came through at first, people said, whew. There was a sense of relaxation, and that's what I was referring to. And I, myself, thought we had dodged a bullet. You know why? Because I was listening to people, probably over the airways, say, the bullet has been dodged. And that was what I was referring to. Of course, there were plans in case the levee had been breached. There was a sense of relaxation in the moment, a critical moment. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify that.

Plenty of Blame to Go Round (IV)

One issue that looks pretty raw right now was the local effort by neighboring Gretna to keep (black, poor) New Orleans residents from walking to safety--apparently because the route would have taken them right past (white, wealthier) people's neighborhoods.

Start with the summary account offered by Kevin Drum -- he has a good map. Then read Digby at hullabaloo for the details, and the outrage. Also Making Light. Ice the cake with this excerpt from an interview with New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin in which he talks about the closing of the bridge:

That says that people value their property, and were protecting property, over human life. ... I'm pissed about it. And I don't know how many people died as a result of that.

Denver Post's Disturbing Story on FEMA Camp

DenverPost.com reporter Diane Carman's story -- a reliable source -- begins like this:

If I didn't know better, I'd have thought I was peering through the fence at a concentration camp.

The conditions of the camps where Katrina's victims are being herded is, or should be, a matter of pressing concern.

A Drug Company That's Not Utterly Heartless

Escapable Logic points to an impressive offer from Pfizer:

Victims of Hurricane Katrina who have lost access to their Pfizer medications can receive an emergency supply at any Walgreens, Rite Aid, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club or CVS pharmacy.

From now until September 16th, Pfizer and these pharmacies are helping survivors obtain their Pfizer medicines. No matter where patients may be residing, if they are from the affected areas, they can go to any Walgreens, Rite Aid, Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club or CVS pharmacy and ask the pharmacist for help. Many independent community pharmacies will also be participating.

Patients without prescription drug coverage will get their medicines for free.

And it seems to be a genuine offer. Nice.

Astrodome Lockdown Allegation

Boing Boing links to this account of a Lockdown in the Astrodome:

They locked out the people out of the dome, evacuees and volunteers. we have not had volunteers able to come in all morning. people just screaming broke into the gate to get in and all the people and volunteers ran into the dome. hundreds, at least 200 or 300 people started pushing in. no one was on the other side of the locked gate, no traffic no guards, etc. my volunteer guy telling the story from the human rights campaign ran in too. finally one police officer tried to corral people and push them back out. and in ffact everyone was pushed out. except my guy who pretended he had been in all along. and the people who had been in were pushed out and locked out.

...

No reliant empolyees, no one , no officers, no one to ask, people screaming and panicking, locked out of what is now their home, their kids are in here, etc. no one in the dome knows what is happening.

Just wait until someone dies for lack of medical attention because they were locked in or the EMT were locked out...

Legal Aid for Katrina Victims

JURIST has the links on Legal aid for Katrina victims (thank you, Elliott!).

Eyewitness Account of a "FEMA Detainment Camp" (Updated)

Reader Cafi posted a link to this item in a story comment, but I thought it merited a bit more attention, if only to have it, I hope, debunked. Have a look at I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp.

[See update below: whether this account was true or false, the camp is now "on standby status" and doesn't actually have the 3,000 persons who were anticipated.]

I know nothing about the web site hosting this story, although a cursory look at the front page makes it look pretty seriously crazy. And I know nothing about the poster. So I am not going to take this on faith. (There is, though, a Baptist camp in Falls Creek, OK, and it is hosting Katrina victims. Although the Red Cross is helping FEMA so they are not operating alone.)

The troubling thing, though, is that given what we know about FEMA to date, can one confidently dismiss this account as a fraud without counter-evidence? It's not as easy as I'd like (in other words, if it's a fraud, it plays well to our fears). It is insufficiently implausible that FEMA is isolating and disempowering the victims of Katrina, subjecting them to a regime of no practical way to have contact with the outside world, no cooking, no gifts, two communal meals a day, and armed guards all around. And no leaving the camp, either. But not even allowing in itinerant preachers? In a camp owned by the Baptist church? That's very hard to believe.

Could it really be that our government has in effect decided to enforce what amounts to the worst form of communism on the new lumpenproletariat?

I so much want to believe that our country is better than this. And I do. Just not quite as strongly as I'd like to.

Anyone live near Falls Creek, Oklahoma?

UPDATE: I am somewhat reassured by this news item in the Pryor Creek Daily Times:

Falls Creek operation put on standby status

OKLAHOMA CITY - After anticipating the arrival of 3,000 survivors from Hurricane Katrina for more than two days, volunteers and government agencies were given the word late Tuesday that the status of operations at Falls Creek was put on standby.

Major Mike Grime, Oklahoma Highway Patrol, announced to nearly 400 volunteers and state personnel that the decision had been made by the Governor and other state officials to scale back operations at Falls Creek.

"The good news is that it appears those who needed our help have been taken care of for now," Grimes explained. "We will scale back to a skeleton crew for now, but none of our facilities will be compromised. There will be troopers present 24 hours a day at Falls Creek as we evaluate the need on a 12, 24, 36 and 48 hour basis. Falls Creek has been and will continue to be ready within a 10 to 12 hour window in the event that the conference facility is still needed." While disappointment was evident on the faces of many, appreciation for the Falls Creek operation was recognized with a round of applause.

Stop Those Pesky Reporters and Everyone Can Go Back to Sleep

It has a certain twisted logic: If the thing that is most responsible for Bush's bad week is the bad TV images, and the reporters who saw with their own eyes that he and his underlings were lying--then surely the answer is to remove the reporters from the picture so we can all get back to spinning as usual.

Thus, blogs report "Rape, murder, beatings" in Astrodome, say evacuees -- but the press is being excluded from the Astrodome, just as the press is being excluded from the ugly side of the recovery efforts (FEMA: "We have requested that no photographs of the deceased be made by the media." And they are trying to enforce it too). You can get more details of the campaign against information at Jacob Appelbaum's blog, along with the long, sad saga of his attempts to set up a low-power radio station there in order to provide information to its denizens. [Also, see the flickr collection of pictures from Houston, where the people evacuated are being held.]

[Update: more details at TPM, notably this link to Brian Williams's account of the military training weapons on reporters. (Sudden flash of all the journalists shot by our troops in Iraq?)]

[Update2: Kevin Drum sees the pattern here also.]

Of course, it wasn't just a failure of the administration's media policy. It was a much more telling failure, a failure of the government to even care. A failure dramatically underlined by a rapier-like anecdote told by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi about Bush's reaction when she told him that he should fire FEMA Head Michael Brown:

'He said 'Why would I do that?''' Pelosi said.

"'I said because of all that went wrong, of all that didn't go right last week.' And he said 'What didn't go right?''''

Plenty of Blame to Go Around (III)

Until we get all the facts out, any assignment of the responsibility for the human component of this natural and human-enhanced disaster must have an air of tentativeness to it. Nevertheless, here's how it looks right now.

Besides the universal condemantion of FEMA's failures, much of the early sparring seems to be centered on the role of Mayor Ray Nagin. A series of posts at Sivacracy suggests that the Rove machine has picked on him to be their fall guy:

• Blaming the Mayor (in which the city is accused of having failed its role as a first responder)
• Rove's Talking Points: Blame the Mayor (in which the WSJ comes up with a surprisingly similar argument, with the bonus that the governor is also to blame for FEMAs failure to anything since she didn't send "a timely request for specific aid" -- those guys at FEMA just can't think for themselves, you see)
• Blaming the Mayor: Part 3 (looking into who is spreading this it's-the-locals'-fault line)

Whoever is spreading this story -- most likely a part of the larger disinformation campaign -- from what I can tell (and we don't have all the facts) it seems to be pretty much baloney. We have federal supremacy; we have FEMA because a locality devastated by a huge disaster has lost the ability to act as first responder and/or is likely to be overwhelmed. And it sure isn't the case that FEMA couldn't act without an instruction book from a mayor or a governor as to whether food and water and doctors were needed.

But that doesn't make the local officials heroes either. This mayor -- and past mayors -- are not blameless for the state of the infrastructure. [Although it's notable that the Bush administration slashed federal funds to strengthen the levees and then (I gather) raided what was left for another purpose--Iraq.] This mayor -- like past mayors -- is not blameless for signing off (weeks in advance) on an evacuation policy that was, at best, radically insufficient to meet the needs of the poorest and most helpless. And this mayor, at least in hindsight, seems to have waited a long time to order an evacuation.

Even after the storm, there have been a number of very ugly reports of local authorities either blocking the Red Cross, or acting like racist thugs.

None of that excuses the total evil of FEMA's sloath, failure and malfeasance both as the hurricane was approaching and after it hit: turning away help, providing too little itself, too late.

Nor does it excuse the person who appointed the incompetents at the helm. Oh no, not at all.

First-Person Account:

One of the Daily Kos diarists has a Another NO Story from the inside, a first-person account of being trapped in the Big Uneasy.

I've included just part of this ugly story below. It's very ugly, and I urge you to read all of the original, it's horrific stuff.

Revolutions have started over less.

[Update: Original source, via Dave Farber's list.]

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the "imminent" arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

By day 4 our hotels had run out of fuel and water. Sanitation was dangerously abysmal. As the desperation and despair increased, street crime as well as water levels began to rise. The hotels turned us out and locked their doors, telling us that the "officials" told us to report to the convention center to wait for more buses. As we entered the center of the City, we finally encountered the National Guard. The Guards told us we would not be allowed into the Superdome as the City's primary shelter had descended into a humanitarian and health hellhole. The guards further told us that the City's only other shelter, the Convention Center, was also descending into chaos and squalor and that the police were not allowing anyone else in. Quite naturally, we asked, "If we can't go to the only 2 shelters in the City, what was our alternative?" The guards told us that that was our problem, and no they did not have extra water to give to us. This would be the start of our numerous encounters with callous and hostile "law enforcement".

...

The police told us that we could not stay. Regardless, we began to settle in and set up camp. In short order, the police commander came across the street to address our group. He told us he had a solution: we should walk to the Pontchartrain Expressway and cross the greater New Orleans Bridge where the police had buses lined up to take us out of the City. The crowed cheered and began to move. We called everyone back and explained to the commander that there had been lots of misinformation and wrong information and was he sure that there were buses waiting for us. The commander turned to the crowd and stated emphatically, "I swear to you that the buses are there."

We organized ourselves and the 200 of us set off for the bridge with great excitement and hope. As we marched pasted the convention center, many locals saw our determined and optimistic group and asked where we were headed. We told them about the great news. Families immediately grabbed their few belongings and quickly our numbers doubled and then doubled again. Babies in strollers now joined us, people using crutches, elderly clasping walkers and others people in wheelchairs. We marched the 2-3 miles to the freeway and up the steep incline to the Bridge. It now began to pour down rain, but it did not dampen our enthusiasm.

As we approached the bridge, armed Gretna sheriffs formed a line across the foot of the bridge. Before we were close enough to speak, they began
firing their weapons over our heads. This sent the crowd fleeing in various directions. As the crowd scattered and dissipated, a few of us inched forward and managed to engage some of the sheriffs in conversation. We told them of our conversation with the police commander and of the commander's assurances. The sheriffs informed us there were no buses waiting. The commander had lied to us to get us to move.

We questioned why we couldn't cross the bridge anyway, especially as there was little traffic on the 6-lane highway. They responded that the West Bank was not going to become New Orleans and there would be no Superdomes in their City. These were code words for if you are poor and black, you are not crossing the Mississippi River and you were not getting out of New Orleans.

...

From a woman with a battery powered radio we learned that the media was talking about us. Up in full view on the freeway, every relief and news organizations saw us on their way into the City. Officials were being asked what they were going to do about all those families living up on the freeway? The officials responded they were going to take care of us. Some of us got a sinking feeling. "Taking care of us" had an ominous tone to it.

Unfortunately, our sinking feeling (along with the sinking City) was correct. Just as dusk set in, a Gretna Sheriff showed up, jumped out of his patrol vehicle, aimed his gun at our faces, screaming, "Get off the fucking freeway". A helicopter arrived and used the wind from its blades to blow away our flimsy structures. As we retreated, the sheriff loaded up his truck with our food and water.

Once again, at gunpoint, we were forced off the freeway. All the law enforcement agencies appeared threatened when we congregated or congealed into groups of 20 or more. In every congregation of "victims" they saw "mob" or "riot". We felt safety in numbers. Our "we must stay together" was impossible because the agencies would force us into small atomized groups.

In the pandemonium of having our camp raided and destroyed, we scattered once again. Reduced to a small group of 8 people, in the dark, we sought refuge in an abandoned school bus, under the freeway on Cilo Street. We were hiding from possible criminal elements but equally and definitely, we were hiding from the police and sheriffs with their martial law, curfew and shoot-to-kill policies.

And there's lots lots more.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around (II)

Obsidian Wings makes the case in At All Levels that the Mayor of New Orleans waited too long to order an evacuation. Yes, the hurricane track was originally away from the city, but even after it shifted, there was first no order, then a request for a 'voluntary' evacuation, and then, at least nine hours late, the actual order.

(None of which absolves the feds for a substantial failure to pre-position assets, and a very near total failure to get into gear once the hurricane had passed.)

FEMA Turned Away Lots of Helpers

liberal pen pal .:. FEMA: Agency of the Damned has lnks to all kinds of help that FEMA turned away. Amazing.

Help From Miami Turned Back and Refused

Sue Ann, who lives her principles and does good in her spare time, is getting madder and madder:

On Wednesday 4 private jet ambulances left Miami to respond to the direct pleas of 4 New Orleans Hospitals that had requested help transporting ventilator patients from the evacuation area.

The jets landed in NO and waited 7 hours on the tarmac then were REFUSED and turned back by the National Guard. No patients were transported. The planes next went to Baton Rouge and picked up whomever they could.

A Florida man who spent his own money to buy 150 flatboats to help with the evacuation was REFUSED again by the National Guard. The would not allow him to give the boats to aid the rescue efforts. He turned back and gave them out in MIssissippi which isn't as flood damaged.

Food being shipped to the area is also being turned back. Caravans of individuals can't donate food. If it's not done through the proper channels of some "approved" religious organization you can't help.

The Modern "Let Them Eat Cake" Moment

When I saw this quote on Atrios's site, I thought it was a parody.

But Editor and Publisher, to whom he cites, is reporting it as straight news:

Barbara Bush: Things Working Out "Very Well" for Poor Evacuees from New Orleans NEW YORK 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.

Then she added: "What I’m hearing 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."

And here's a link to the audio of the NPR Marketplace segment containing this incredible quote. It's real. Although some people might I suppose call it a nervous giggle rather than a chuckle.

PS. E&P actually ameliorated the quote from la Bush. What she said on the tape about New Orleans' newly destitute is: "What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they want to stay" in Texas.

Plenty of Blame to Go Around

Long before FEMA dropped the ball, local authorities decided they didn't need one. See LENIN'S TOMB: Everything has gone according to plan. (spotted via Making Light)

Lies and Truths

Lies and Truth

Lies

It's almost awe-inspiring to see the level of energy and coordination the Bush White House can bring to bear in a genuine crisis. Not hurricane Katrina, of course, but the political crisis they now find rising around them. ... the storyline and the outlines of the attack are now clear: pin the blame for the debacle on state and local authorities.

And that comes after all the photo-op fakes. See, for example, The Potemkin President but see also President Potemkin for why this slanders Prince Grigori Potemkin.

So TPM's café has a whole thread devoted to fact-checking the administration's lies and buck-passing.

Of course, with the gullible this stuff works. And what's more gullible than the White House media? White House lies on when LA governor asked for state of emergency to be declared. The Bush administration spin succeeds in suckering Washington Post, which doesn't fact-check and reports: "As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said." The Post then runs a misleading correction ("A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26.") which fails to source the error to anonymous White House operatives but instead takes the rap.

More Post laziness or worse: Spinning poll results to make Bush look less bad. (But to be fair to the Post, they did break this story on how Karl Rove seems to have claimed a homestead (tax) deduciton he clearly had no right to...and might even have committted voter fraud.)

Chertoff on Face the Nation: it was two disasters (hurricane and flooding) one after the other; no one could have expected that...

Truth

The DHS was preparing for both a storm and levee collapse. Full details via Isthatlegal.org. Isthatlegal.org bonus: see Eric Muller, You Can't Cross-Examine A Hurricane on why Chertoff, a great prosecutor, and maybe a great terrorist-hunter, is not the guy you want running disaster relief.

Aaron Broussard, president of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, on how the feds kept promising help would be there tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. Links to interview transcript and videos at Boing Boing. Other local officials argue that FEMA was making things worse, not better. The Times-Pic editorializes that "Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially."

Compare the Bush poll numbers as spun by the Post (above) to these tracking poll numbers:

Thinking just about the President of the United States ... Do you approve or disapprove of President Bush's response to Hurricane Katrina?

            9/4  9/3  9/2  9/1  8/31
Approve      38   41   40   46   48
Disapprove   55   53   53   44   39

New Orleans Begins Counting Its Dead. The death toll is thousands, maybe more than 10,000. Nobody really knows.

Reporter's notebook: Treating those left behind.

The State We're In

Relief efforts (and relief prevention)

More links about the unfolding disaster. It looks as if resources are finally being mobilized to begin to help out under the direction of Lt. Gen. Russel Honre, but there are still many signs of a disorganized response, both on the ground and at the policy level. Particularly shocking to me are the many examples of offers of aid being spurned: offers from at home and abroad are being rejected. It's also a shock to learn that the authorities are refusing to allow victims to walk out of New Orleans, literally turning them back and forcing them to go back to where there is neither food nor water nor public order. [On Fox, though, Bill O'Reilly says the victims, most too poor to have any transport, brought their troubles on themselves because they chose not to leave! Guess that lets off the administration for any blame, right?] And a tiny part of the reason why there is nothing there is that the authorities are also not allowing public-spirited persons to deliver supplies to the desperate. That's right: the authorities are penning people in and keeping them destitute. And ordering the Red Cross to keep out. You read that right: our government is standing between the Red Cross and desperate Americans in New Orleans.

Outside of New Orleans, i.e. in places where the big media searchlight has yet to penetrate, they're still waiting for the first hint of federal help.

We're in a state

A British commentator says, "Lots of things about the US become easier to understand if you consider it as a very rich third world country..."

Indeed, in the USA, rich people staying at a Hyatt who are clean and well-fed get rushed to the front of the line for buses evacuating New Orleans--ahead of the poor folks trapped at the Convention Center.

Meanwhile, at least some elements of our military see the victims of the disaster as some sort of enemy to be pacified forcibly ("This place is going to look like Little Somalia," Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. "We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.").

And a guy who stole an abandoned bus in order to bus a load of people out of the disaster zone is not being congratulated or drafted into relief efforts. Nope, he's being prosecuted.

Correction: in the better part of the third world, after the tsunami, people didn't start mugging and pillaging.

Other international reactions, via the BBC. See also BBC, New Orleans Crisis Shames Americans.

The hapless state of FEMA

The US military was ready to begin emergency food drops into New Orleans much earlier in the week. But they were waiting on a request from FEMA. (See also Washington Post).

The formal Louisiana state request for FEMA involvement and disaster aid went out on Aug. 28, so the failure to respond can't be put at the feet of local officials (this is another right wing spin point that is not based on reality).

CNN - yes CNN - truth squads official statements on the pace of disaster relief.

Homeland Security Secretary (and future scapegoat?) Michael Chertoff - FEMA's boss's boss - says you shouldn't blame poor FEMA. After all, they haven't got plans for dealing with a nuclear attack either. (I am NOT making this up.)

The clueless state of Bush

Bush visits Trent Lott's destroyed vacation home (his main house is fine), and yukks it up. Marty Lederman reacts:

Staggering, no? For five days and nights, the Nation has been witness to devastation among a population that is predominantly poor and African-American. And the singular example of loss on which the President chooses to focus is an oceanfront property of none other than Trent Lott! Well, I don't doubt that the President will, in fact, one day sit on the grand porch of the rebuilt Lott oceanfront (second) home, sipping an iced tea and reminiscing about the good ol' days. But isn't this an especially inauspicious moment to be calling that image to mind?

"Just think of that quote for a minute; and the laughter that followed. The poor and the black are dying, dead, drowned and desperate in New Orleans and elsewhere. But the president manages to talk about the future 'fantastic' porch of a rich, powerful white man who only recently resigned his position because he regretted the failure of Strom Thurmond to hold back the tide of racial desegregation."

It gets worse: Bush's tour of the disaster area actually set back relief efforts : "We had arrangements to airlift food by helicopter to these folks, and now the food is sitting in trucks because they won't let helicopters fly".

UPDATE: UNBELIEVABLE - it's even worse than that -- Sen. Mary Landrieu says :

"I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims -- far more efficiently than buses -- FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.

"But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment."

Causes and cures

There's a connection between this incompetent cluelessness and the bubble politics (GOP-only 'town meetings' for example) practiced by this administration. The American Street connects the dots. In that context it's interesting that NBC censored an unscripted anti-Bush remark from its hurricane relief concert. Would a pro-Bush adlib have been censored too? Unlikely.

Michael Bérubé adds his inimitable voice to the chorus. And Brian Leiter says Now is the Perfect Time to Assign Blame and Responsibility.

You Couldn't Make This Up

From the Boston Globe, via TPM, Bush Approach to Quality Disaster Management:

The federal official in charge of the bungled New Orleans rescue was fired from his last private-sector job overseeing horse shows.

Seems he has a track record of exactly the kind of failure we're seeing here,

Brown was forced out of the position after a spate of lawsuits over alleged supervision failures.

Pigs Are Flying, People Are Dying

Hell on earth? Yes, and hell freezing over too: FOX News -- Fox news forsooth -- is reporting that it is inexplicable that the relief is not provided to victims of the flood SIX DAYS after the disaster struck. See the video. Who would have imagined Geraldo Rivera would be shouting the truth at America? And Shepard Smith reporting that people are locked into the Superdome where they are starving and dying. Of course the anchors tried to obfuscate....

Interview With Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans

Harrowing audio (.mp3) of the WWL radio interview with Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans. Not for the faint of heart, nor those who swoon at "bad" language.

Kos: Where Were They?

Daily Kos: Left Behind

The common televised theme is of reporters traveling to hard hit areas in New Orleans or the smaller communities, and reporting no FEMA presence, no National Guard presence, no food, no water, no help -- and this is day 5. "Where is the government?" has been the predominant theme of the day. Apologists are being met with barely concealed disgust, in more and more quarters. Bush administration cuts to the levee system are being widely reported. FEMA inaction is being roundly criticized by ever-more-urgent live feeds from disheveled media figures with stunned expressions.

The Convention Center situation appears to be horrific, with deaths of elderly and infants due to dehydration already now occurring. It's not clear if anything can be or is being done tonight, or how many will die between now and the morning, or what will happen then.

The lawlessness is rampant. It's important to note, however, that the lawlessness wasn't rampant on Monday. It wasn't rampant on Tuesday. We heard only twinges of it on Wednesday. Today, from the sounds of the reports, a city devoid of all hope devolved into absolute chaos.

A Total Disaster

Mostly just links, because I'm too depressed and horrified to do anything more.

Hell on Earth

• It's really bad in the Superdome.
• Much worse than they dare show on TV (OK, how much spine do you expect them to grow in a week?)
• Life is even tough at the Ritz

The situation is so bad that the Press has grown a spine, however temporary:

• On NPR: Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff wasn't aware there were people in the Superdome without food or water.
• I heard a similar thing on NBC-TV (which can be heard on the radio in Miami): First they summarized a Chertoff statement saying that the administration would be stepping up efforts to evacuate everyone from the Superdome, but these efforts were being hampered by more people turning up. It would be better, he said, if people would go to the many other areas in the city where food and water were being provided. Then NBC went to its man on the ground, who said, (1) that there were no communications in N.O. so that no one would get any of the messages from Chertoff or Bush or anyone else; (2) there were no public officials telling anyone anything; (3) he'd driven "all over town" and he hadn't seen any sign of any attempt to communicate to the public what it should do, and (4) on those drives all day he had not seen any sign of a single of Chertoff's supposed areas where people should go, nor of the food and water. If they were there -- and it was pretty clear he didn't believe a word of it -- they were not visible to anyone.
• CNN has a spine -- see the video in which Sen. Landrieu mouths platitudes and gets clobbered for it by a reporter who's just seen reality.
• My brother has had a spine for some time, but it's nice to see that recognized.

FEMA follies

• FEMA web site suggests best place charity money should go is ... Pat Robertson.
• FEMA brass not picked for what they knew, but rather who
• They were simply unprepared. And the diversion of resources to the Iraq war is a substantial part of the story.

• Shoot on sight
• Bush administration tries out a blaming the victims meme

• Don't shoot on sight
• Eric Muller
• A suggestion that we adopt the 'Dunkirk Model'
• First thoughts on the economic costs: we're poorer now (The actual broadcast version was better than this blogged version)

• George W. Bush - scoundrel and liar (also Now trying to obfuscate a record of taking money from flood control and disaster relief.)
• And his incompetent team
• Make that totally incompetent team