Looking for Katrina's silver lining? Check out the long lines of traffic snaking out of Houston 2 days before Rita's landfall. Looks like some lessons were learned well.
Best of luck to Houston. Hopefully, Rita will decrease in intensity before landfall also.
Hurricane Rita is barreling toward the Gulf Coast. Would the person with whom God is angry please turn himself/herself in to the appropriate authorities. I'm just kidding, the Taliban isn't.
Ok, but on a serious note, if Allah is so angry with us, why aren't we living in squalor in the middle of an ugly desert surrounded by highly armed and well trained men trying to kill us? Not yet, you say? Pessimist.
We'll rebuild whatever gets knocked down. No thanks on the burqas.
The President took responsibility for the Federal Government's poor response time in New Orleans. Ok, manly thing to do. The bureaucratic malaise was awful. The Homeland Security Department was overwhelmed.
The President's solution?
Build more layers of bureaucracy. Ugh. Whatever happened to Reaganism? This is not good.
I'd love to see an originalist on the Supreme Court. Someone who understands that the government can't solve the questions of poverty and every other social ill known to man. The best the government can hope to do is use those problems as sounding boards for more government, which leads to more problems, which leads to more government... (You get the picture.)
From the Philadelphia Inquirer:
"The committee's ranking Democrat, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D., Mass.) cited Hurricane Katrina and the devastation in the Gulf Coast region as evidence of continuing inequality in the United States.
Kennedy said of Roberts: "Many of his past statements and writings raise questions about his commitment to equal opportunity and the bipartisan remedies we have adopted in the past."
From the Massachussetts Budget and Policy Center:
"August 30, 2005
Demonstrating the difficulties the Commonwealth continues to face in recovering from the 2001 recession, data released August 30 by the U.S. Census Bureau for 2004 show that the percentage of people without health insurance in Massachusetts has risen, while both the Commonwealth’s median household income – a common benchmark of middle-class economic security – and its poverty rate remained statistically unchanged."
Massachussetts has a HUGE government infrastructure.
"All politics is local." - Tip O'Neil
I had just walked into the phone company office in St. Croix when the first image flashed across the screen. Peter Jennings was saying that a small plane may have crashed into the World Trade Center. As the next hour unfolded, most of us could not believe what we were seeing.
One day out of the year, I am a New Yorker. This is that day.
Scammers thrive on greed AND misery. Helpful article from CNN on Hurricane Katrina relief scams. Make sure that your money is going to help, not being stolen.
Now estimates are saying that the death toll may be substantially lower. With everything else so screwed up, it would be nice to know that the death estimates were as screwed up as the preparations. A cynic would say that the easy way to make a bundle would be to overestimate the losses. Just a thought.
Philadelphia was prepared, but it looks as though not many Katrina evacuees will spend time here.
Philly gets an A for effort. But I do understand why people would not want to evacuate this far north. Same goes for the people who were shipped to Utah. Good heavens, if my house were blown down and I woke up the next day in Utah, I would believe it was the wrath of God.
Utah? Give me Philly any day.
Want a good analogy for what is wrong with this country? This jackass calling on the radio is going on and on about the oppressed racial minorities being crushed under the boots of the evil capitalist American system. The root of his assertion was that there were no jobs to be had. The radio host then said that millions of people every year immigrated to America because there were all kinds of jobs.
This is where I get pissed:
The jackass replies: You mean you want them to work in the fields for low wages? He sounded horrified, shocked and offended. Hey, dickhead, my grandfather (gasp) worked in the fields for low wages. Had a bunch of kids, some of whom grew up to make good money doing other things.
Yes, I know it is a pity he couldn't do something honorable like, say, defend drug cartels in Federal Court, design video games or create a better tasting cigarette, but hey, not everyone gets to have the good jobs. America is lost the moment an honest job is reduced to something beneath us. Boy, I'm pissed.
GREAT INFORMATION FOR PEOPLE WHO WISH TO ASSIST WITH THE CRISIS IN NEW ORLEANS FROM THE CHARITY NAVIGATOR. If you haven't been involved, PLEASE HELP.
I work too much, some people desperately need a job. A smattering of the rhetoric online right now:
"Yet the problem is much deeper. For half a century, free-market purists have to great effect denigrated the essential role that modern government performs as some terrible liberal plot. Thus, the symbolism of New Orleans' flooding is tragically apt: Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and Louisiana Gov. Huey Long's ambitious populist reforms in the 1930s eased Louisiana out of feudalism and toward modernity; the Reagan Revolution and the callousness of both Bush administrations have sent them back toward the abyss." - READ THE FULL COLUMN - ROBERT SCHEER at Alternet
"In the U.S., the devastation caused by Katrina forces us to confront not only the domestic costs of a diversion of resources to imperialistic adventurism, but also a harbinger of the devastating consequences to come from Bush’s denial of global warming and oil-industry-friendly energy policies: Irreversible Ecological Decline." - READ THE FULL COLUMN - CHARLIE CRAY, at Guerilla News Network
"The real tragedy of Katrina is that most of the people you see stranded on rooftops, starving in the tropical sun, are the poor, mostly black and creole. Not everyone had a car to escape, or a place to go. When all those people evacuated the Big Easy, where were all the schoolbuses, Greyhounds, and taxicabs? Shouldn't the poor have been evacuated this way instead of being left alone to fend for themselves? And where is the National Guard? They're all in Iraq, that's where! CNN and FOX are doing a bangup job of trying to convince us that "Authorities" are doing all they can, but it's obvious that only a handfull of rescue crews are available at all. They keep showing that same Coast Guard chopper rescuing the same guy over and over, meanwhile screams emanate from within the miles of wreckage, pleading for rescue. Welcome to the Third World of the American South." - READ THE FULL COLUMN - a nony mouse at IMC Portland
This could go on for a long column.
On behalf of the people of New Orleans, I'd like to thank these people for all of their much needed criticism. It is, after all, far more valuable than working to get people back into homes and a normal life. Really, much appreciated. Can you smell the sarcasm?
It has been my hard earned experience that criticism costs nothing and constructive engagement costs a fortune in hard work and thought. The lack of maturity and gravity from the crybabies on this issue is frustrating.
Because I have friends that are deeply involved in volunteering for the American Red Cross, that's where my donations are going. However, if you are looking for a way to give locally, this is it:
Contributions to Philadelphia's Project Brotherly Love can be sent to the Fund for Philadelphia Inc., 1515 Arch St., 12th Floor, Philadelphia 19102. Cash, checks, money orders, Visa, MasterCard and American Express will be accepted.
The scope of this disaster is becoming almost unbelievable. Trudy Rubin in Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer really pissed me off with her "How dare anyone" question with regard to people saying that pointing fingers right now is playing politics. I DARE, Trudy. When you begin your column with a comparison to Iraq, I DARE.
There will be a time to fire people and some people had bloody well be polishing the sword upon which they will fall. If I were the president, I'd be rushing to find a new Homeland Security secretary so that I could fire Mr. Chertoff at earliest convenience. But when 22 people are found lashed together (dead) and there may be more people on the edge of death trapped in attics, I'm not going to sit on my fat butt behind a computer keyboard and snipe at the president over Iraq. Can Ms. Rubin say the same (fat butt or no)?
I was going to discuss the toxicity of New Orlean's water today, but the truth is, it is hellish. Sheriff's deputies received burns from exposure to it. This is a nightmare. I fear that the environmental damage may be more catastrophic than the flooding or hurricane itself. And yes, I've seen the pictures from New Orleans. This entire scenario is horrifying.
So I'll be blogging quite a bit over the coming months about the environmental state of New Orleans and its surrounding ecosystem. Right now, I'm just hoping that the rescuers can reach people before they die. That is the scope of my ambition.
I never thought I'd see the day on American soil that we'd see this kind of destruction. It is sobering.
That's all I have for now.
