<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/katrina/story/0,16441,1562005,00.html"
“Criticism of Bush mounts as more than 10,000 feared dead,” The Guardian. The story‘s subtitles:
- Governor threatens looters with shoot-to-kill
- Relief convoys arrive after four days
And read Moscow/St. Petersburg Times columnist Chris Floyd’s “World Gone Wrong.” It’ll leave you breathless.
Good news from a DFW member in Seattle:
My friend just called to let me know that here in WA state, Lowes has also pledged to match donations.
This is the link to that story — it came from The Olympian newspaper in Olympia, Wash.
I would prefer that we here in WA did more than this. We could at the very least agree to accept 25,000 people like San Antonio did. We could take 4 times that number. I’ve been on the phone all morning with friends; our hearts are breaking and we are incandescent with rage. We want to go down there and find people (and their pets) to bring back here where they would be safe and warm and could start to rebuild their lives again.
Perhaps we should start writing our representatives and ask the state to help coordinate this.
CNN has just reported that the president we should have had, Al Gore, has just arrived in New Orleans to take 100+ ill people back to Tennessee for treatment and shelter. No footage yet, but it does my heart good to hear about it.
Did you see the most recent press conference shown on CNN with Michael Chertoff et al? Wow – what a liar!
This is it folks – America’s new enemy. You knew they had to blame someone and that someone is Osama Bin Nature.
I just got back from running errands, so I missed most of the press conference. I saw that he was on and figured he’d be pushing a load of crap, so I didn’t pay too much attention. Guess I was right. š
Catnip, how are you feeling? I thought you were going to take a break from the computer for a while to rest.
You didn’t miss much. The mantra was the standard line – “no one could have foreseen this”.
Holy crap, Batman.
My physical pain has not subsided and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. I just have to deal with it. My mental & emotional status has improved since I took that much needed time off.
There was no way I could just stand by and watch this horrific catastrophe by myself. That’s why I came back to blogging. Just like everyone, I need sanity, reassurance and a sense that humanity will endure. If I had the cash and a reliable car, I’d jump into it today and head to New Orleans to help out. I feel so incredibly useless as I watch what’s happening. My pain is nothing compared to the hell these victims are in.
Well, I’m glad you’re back and feeling mentally better, although please take care of yourself.
I’ve been glued to blogs since the storm started approaching New Orleans. I’ve watched more CNN and even FNC(!) than I have since before the election. This is a horrific event and I think that we are going to have another session of national PTSD similar to 9/11. It’s going to take years to heal.
Yes, I like the kind of president who rolls up his shirtsleeves. So, the president was there in person, you say, evacuating people. Glad to hear it. I have always liked Gore. Good job,sir.
CNN has just reported that the president we should have had, Al Gore, has just arrived in New Orleans to take 100+ ill people back to Tennessee for treatment and shelter.
I knew that Al Gore, a good and decent man, would show up there.
Oddly nobody I know expects such a gesture from the Clintons and everyone’s just depressed to hear that Lieberman intends to ‘investigate’ the federal response.
When I heard that Al was coming to give aid, I started to cry. Even just thinking about it now makes me pfeklempt. He’s a good man and we as a nation were robbed.
The Clintons only think of themselves and what is politically expedient. Fuck them! And I’m sure Bushco is oh so scared of a fucking Lieberman “investigation”.
Knowing how Bushco work, Michael Brown is probably being sized for a Medal of Freedom as we type.
about. All is well: Bush says he “understands” the devastation requires more than one day’s attention. That’s a direct quote. Leadership and comprehension don’t get any better than this. Not in GOPworld, anyhow.
He is just such a stunningly briliant man, isn’t he?
If I’m going to mock the man’s intelligence, the least I can do is use Spellcheck!
(That’s ironic. Spellcheck doesn’t recognize the word spellcheck.)
At TPMCafe
Has a lovely rant here’s a piece of it (but the whole thing is pretty great):
And here name, of course is Annie Lamott — I’m very sorry.
Last night on Night Line the closing feature was the expose that the thousands of people on I-10 are those plucked from rooftops in aerial rescue ops. Helicopters coming in and taking off 5 at once, nonstop, unloading refugees and returning for more.
The scandal, the outrageous and unforgiveable screw-up is there was no evidence of any plan or person in charge of their evacuation from the highway to a shelter anywhere. No provisions had been made for them — there was no water, no food, and there were no port-a-lets.
The ABC reporter interviewed an LA State Trooper on the scene early in the day, who told him the people were being staged there until buses arrived to take them to safety. When asked when those buses were coming the Trooper said in a little while, or a couple of hours (I don’t remember accurately).
The news crew evidently stayed on the story throughout the day because they interviewed the same Trooper at dusk, asking him the same question as earlier, he looked down at his feet and mumbled he didn’t know where the buses were, much less if any were coming at all.
The newsman showed that lines of school buses were staged on the interstate 15 miles away, sitting idle. The drivers didn’t know why they were there, when, or they were going to pick up refugees.
Let us all praise the famous men of DHS, who are supposed to be in charge, by LAW.
What has become of America? We once were strong enough to deal with natural disasters, protect ourselves against attack and were respected around the world. In recent years we have been attacked and the man who orchestrated that attack remains free. We have had a blackout that nearly engulfed the entire Northeast of the nation. And now we have the complete failure of the Federal government to heed warnings that the levees would break and New Orleans flood. America is failing. Why? Why did our strong economy of the 1990’s become the weak, limping economy of today? Why did the budgest surplus become a massive deficit? Why is bin Laden still free and al Qaeda still strong?
And why were so many abandoned in New Orleans for several days?
I was disgusted to learn that Bush, Cheney and Rice were all on vacation as people suffered in New Orleans. There is a severe failure of leadership in America. This is why we have become so weak.
I have agif of an outrage meter- but dont know how to post it!
In googling Tin soldiers and bush is coming I came across this: Tin Soldiers and We are Coming
By William Rivers Pitt
From: http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/050504A.shtml
Also: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0405/S00054.htm
It sure seems like Insurgents(YES I have seen this term used for New Orleans’ residents!!) will be shot. Kent State helped bring Nixon down. Let us not accept any of this. Let us bring down the entire bush admninistration, keeping in mind democrats(just the title they used), were aslo involved with many of bushs’ disasters. Let us LEARN from the Vietnam fiasco, and hold every gulity party RESPONSIBLE this time, to the full extent of the law.
Excellent wrap up to the Article by Pitt: “This is sacred ground. 34 years ago, some very ordinary Americans rose up to strike a blow against a disastrous war, and the price paid for this decision to speak up and speak out was fearful and mortal. The wheel has rolled, and has come around once more.
We must rise again on this sacred ground, we must enter again into the valley of the shadow of death, and we must fear no evil, because this must be stopped, and we must be the ones to stop it. Patriots once marched here, and must march here again. We. Must. Learn.
This is your wake up call, Mr. Bush. Your 15 minutes are just about over. Tin soldiers and we are coming.”
September 24th Washington DC, BE THERE !!! Take action sooner, if so moved.
Bush is singing Paul Simons Cicilia But he uses Katrina, ( probably trying to play the new Guitar)
Oh God, this has got to be the worst, most unfortunate photo of America ever.
from Reuters …read the whole thing. But here’s one quote:
I am dying to see how everybody handles the scenes Sat PM of the choppers dropping the cartons of water and MRE’s over the city of NO.
5 effing days after the fact – all of a sudden they can do air drops? I can’t even concieve how this will be handled. Maybe they won’t say anything and just hope it slips thru the cracks.
billjpa@aol.com
Not only that – CNN was covering the AP pool photographer dropping water and MREs from his helicopter today. Why aren’t there enough official helicopters to do that job?
Everyone…please this is a must read. Of all people I am pimping the best GD diary I have ever read…EVER. He says it all. We need to pay attention. I cannot say anymore. Please read this.
dkos must read.
Aloheezy is right. Great diary. go read it.
If JFK or RFK or MLK were alive today, I could see them delivering this as a speech. It’s that phenomenal.
.
No humanity for the innocent – just collateral damage – the dead need not be counted. The poor and elderly of NOLA have no homes, who will miss them, who will collect their body when they pass away?
Hurricane Katrina victims rest as they wait for evacuation at Algier's Point in New Orleans, La.AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
New Orleans Left to the Dead and Dying
NEW ORLEANS AP – 1 minute ago — Thousands more bedraggled refugees were bused and airlifted to salvation, leaving the heart of New Orleans to the dead and dying, the elderly and frail stranded too many days without food, water or medical care.
No one knows how many were killed by Hurricane Katrina’s floods and how many more succumbed waiting to be rescued. But the bodies are everywhere: hidden in attics, floating among the ruined city, crumpled on wheelchairs, abandoned on highways.
And the dying goes on — at the convention center and an airport triage center, where bodies were kept in a refrigerated truck.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco said that she expected the death toll to reach the thousands. And Craig Vanderwagen, rear admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service, said one morgue alone, at a St. Gabriel prison, expected 1,000 to 2,000 bodies.
[…] Nearby, a woman lay dead in a wheelchair on the front steps. A man was covered in a black drape with a dry line of blood running to the gutter, where it had pooled. Another had lain on a chaise lounge for four days, his stocking feet peeking out from under a quilt.
By mid-afternoon, only pockets of stragglers remained in the streets around the convention center, and New Orleans paramedics began carting away the dead.
A once-vibrant city of 480,000 people, overtaken just days ago by floods, looting, rape and arson, was now an empty, sodden tomb. The exact number of dead won’t be known for some time. Survivors were still being plucked from roofs and shattered highways across the city.
“There are people in apartments and hotels that you didn’t know were there,” Army Brig. Gen. Mark Graham said.
The overwhelming majority of those stranded in the post-Katrina chaos were those without the resources to escape — and, overwhelmingly, they were black.
You believe Bush | Cheney will make an effort to make their true failure known to the nation? Due to Health hazard, damaged blocks of NOLA will be razed to the ground :: Nero loves to see Rome burn.
A U.S. Coast Guard vessel heads south on the Mississippi River past a fire on the east side of New Orleans, La. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, firefighters say they will let the fire burn itself out. AP Photo/Eric Gay~~~