Hell's Half Acre

the divide

black people loot, white people find?

Hastert sucks

I already have built my opinion of Dennis Hastert during the RNC, when a friend of mine who catered an event at which the Speaker of the House spoke, related Hastert's comments about the protests in NYC. My friend told me that Hastert said in his speech that the "protestors were anarchists who didn't understand what freedom really meant."  Here's a link back to my original post.

So now Hastert has the balls to question the rebuilding of New Orleans. On September 1st, Hastert made the statement, "It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level." Okay, later, people had to rush in and say 'oh, he didn't mean it like that. What he meant was, that it needs to be rebuilt differently.' 

Here's a great response from a blog comment on Meta Filter.

I'm a New Orleans refugee. I haven't been posting because I've been too busy trying to keep my life in order. As far as Hastert goes, fuck him. It's not his decision to make, it's mine and the people who live in my city. If we decide not to rebuild then great. At least we made the decision and not some cockholster in Washington.

I want Hastert to say that shit to my face.

I am so angry. I'm tired, outraged, numb, furious, exhausted, and livid.
posted by djeo at 7:15 PM PST on September 1

and another. . .

Bush had no trouble bailing out the airline industry after 9/11 to the tune of something like a whopping $15 billion. They have no trouble bailing out failed industries or SNL's. The agricultural industry gets how much in subsidies every year? But we can't rebuild one of America's greatest cities. These guys are financial genuises they're going to throw how many hundreds of years and hundreds of billions of dollars of investment and property away because the Iraq war is that precious to them.

I can't believe an American leader would even think such a thing.
posted by Buck Eschaton at 6:38 PM PST on September 1

and another. . .

I think it's going to be rebuilt only as a monument to the thousands of people who are dying there right now thanks to the monumental incompetence of the Bush administration.

Gee, isn't the DHS supposed to be able to handle a major disaster in a major US city with thousands of casualties? And most importantly, one that came with no warning?

Good job, guys! I can see our billions in tax dollars have gone to good use.

The biggest monument should be for the American citizens that our soldiers, who are being sent in to "restore order," will be killing in their own home city over the next week or so.

I feel really, really sick. And through-the-roof angry.
posted by zoogleplex at 6:39 PM PST on September 1

and I can't resist one more. . .

I am beginning to believe that Katrina will mark the popping of the Bush bubble.

Just like tulips, just like Pets.com, a definition of a bubble is when people behave a certain way despite all evidence to the contrary. During the dot-com bubble, people -- both individual investors and institutions -- poured money into dot-com start-ups despite the lack of any viable revenue streams or sane business plans due to a belief that "the business models have changed." With the benefit of hindsight we know this was blind folly. At the time it seemed like inspired foresight.

And so it goes, I believe, with President Bush. When I think of a bubble, I'm not talking about the US at large -- obviously, the ongoing poll results and 2002 balloting indicates the country is deeply split between "love Bush" and "hate Bush." The bubble I perceive is his, to now, solid support amongst the Republican portion of the political elite -- the political bureaucracy, pundits, party, media, lobbyists, etc. They have stayed loyal to him despite all evidence of not only his incompetence but his disloyalty to fundamental Republican tenets:
- massive expansion of the federal bureaucracy;
- "nation-building" and foreign intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq;
- military expeditions without clear goals or exit strategies;
- protectionism;
- a "corporate CEO" during a time of rampant corporate corruption;
- expansion of tax cuts in the face of a near unprecedented growth in the federal deficit.

Many of these have been justified by Mr. Bush and his party as a novel necessity forced by the War on Terrorand the dissolution of the post-Cold War consensus. And, true, many might be a result of the fact that the Republican party has shifted from its traditional neo-liberal, conservative base due to greater influence by southerners and fundamentalists.

But maybe the obvious incompetence and insensitivity displayed by Mr. Bush and Co -- in addition to the unsavoury practices illuminated by the Niger affair -- are a turning point, or a tipping point, in US politics. Maybe the suffering and despair of NOLA will serve as a symbol of the rottenness of the administration, just as Lewinskigate served as a symbol of the convenient relativism of Mr Clinton (and the ruthlessness of his opponents.) I don't know. I suspect.
posted by docgonzo at 7:36 PM PST on September 1

disappointed

I know that there have been legitimate security issues facing the relief efforts at the beginning of the week.

I guess I am a little disappointed in the media coverage which jumped, on Monday, to cover and broadcast pictures of looting and that kind of bullshit rather than covering people helping people or analyzing unfolding events. Those kinds of pictures will forever trump a frank discussion of the structural integrity of an unfinished levee, because those pictures are easy to summarize in a 3 second showing. Pictures like that bring in viewing eyeballs and don't require an explaination.  Easy news.

The pictures coming out of a disaster at the onset of a recovery effort, help to broadcast the severity of the disaster and set the tone for recovery.  People would be understandably slow to respond and urge a quick response if the first pictures they see are of kids stealing big screen televisions.  It was the first image I saw, plastered on newspapers, while commuting on Tuesday.  I turned away from coverage until Thursday, when I heard other bloggers speaking of the unfolding catastrophe.

No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming

FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR
"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"
By Sidney Blumenthal

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

Wolf Blitzer and Michael Chertoff

Wolf Blitzer is asking Michael Chertoff some pertinent questions about why the government wasn't more prepared, knowing that a class 4 hurricane was going to make landfall in a place that was only prepared to withstand a category 3 hurricane.  Wolf is asking about deployment of National Guard troops from Louisiana and Mississippi to Iraq and how has it affected the ability to conduct search and rescue efforts. Wolf asked Michael Chertoff about Bush's assertion that "Nobody could anticiapte the breech of the levees."  Wolf's question to Chertoff was "What was he(bush) saying?"

Michael Chertoff is trying to spin this into a "Nobody could have anticipated what would happen, etc etc."  Chertoff also said that people spontaneously showed up at the New Orleans Convention Center and that the federal gov't didn't know about them. My friend Scott, who escaped on thursday, said that people were told to go there and wait, and when they got there, there was absolutely nothing there for them.

This is from CNN online:

Scientists long have discussed this (flooding) possibility as a sort of doomsday scenario.

On Sunday, a day before Hurricane Katrina made landfall, Ivor van Heerden, director of the Louisiana State University Public Health Research Center in Baton Rouge, said, "This is what we've been saying has been going to happen for years."

"Unfortunately, it's coming true," he said, adding that New Orleans "is definitely going to flood."

Also on Sunday, Placquemines Parish Sheriff Jeff Hingle referred back to Hurricane Betsy -- a Category 2 hurricane that struck in 1965 -- and said, "After Betsy these levees were designed for a Category 3."

He added, "These levees will not hold the water back."

But Chertoff seemed unaware of all the warnings.

"This is really one which I think was breathtaking in its surprise," Chertoff said. "There has been, over the last few years, some specific planning for the possibility of a significant hurricane in New Orleans with a lot of rainfall, with water rising in the levees and water overflowing the levees," he told reporters Saturday.

That alone would be "a very catastrophic scenario," Chertoff said. "And although the planning was not complete, a lot of work had been done. But there were two problems here. First of all, it's as if someone took that plan and dropped an atomic bomb simply to make it more difficult. We didn't merely have the overflow, we actually had the break in the wall. And I will tell you that, really, that perfect storm of combination of catastrophes exceeded the foresight of the planners, and maybe anybody's foresight."

Chertoff also argued that authorities did not have much notice that the storm would be so powerful and could make a direct hit on New Orleans.

"It wasn't until comparatively late, shortly before -- a day, maybe a day and a half, before landfall -- that it became clear that this was going to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane headed for the New Orleans area."

As far back as Friday, August 26, the National Hurricane Center was predicting the storm could be a Category 4 hurricane at landfall, with New Orleans directly in its path. Still, storms do change paths, so the possibility existed that it might not hit the city.

But the National Weather Service prediction proved almost perfect.

so nice I'll post it twice

hey. . .I got off on a couple of socio-political rants but just wanted to re-iterate the important stuff

WNNC has a page of resources if you want to help out with hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

also check Hurricade

Long term problem. . .needs long term solution. Money helps.

terminology correction

I must correct myself.   I referred to the hurricane's stranded victims as refugees.  Refugees is a term that tends to disenfranchise these folks and we can not afford that. They are tax paying american citizens who deserve help from the government they support. We see on the news, pictures of urban poor.  Easy to dismiss, especially when the first film coming out of NOLA was NOT of people helping people and people struggling for their lives, but of looters. 

I'm sure, when you are sitting in your comfortable suburban home at the end of a cul-de-sac, I'm sure there is nothing scarier than a swarm of angry poor black faces. . . combined with reports of looters, rapists, and gun-shots. . . let them drown or starve or dehydrate or die in their wheelchairs. Does that get to the heart of everyone's fears regarding race relations in America. . .the urban poor tends to be a subject no one likes to talk about in "polite" society, in suburban society, in wealthy white society. . .stuff that is glossed over. Distrust and suspicion, it isn't there always. . .just sometimes. . .it is hidden guiltily and then justified during times of eruption . . . LA riots(See! Look!)  It is a disease that is so subtle and insidious and prevalent (oh I wouldn't go to that neighborhood. . .it's not safe)  because other people just aren't the same as you and me, are they?

Guess what? These are not people standing around waiting for a handout. They are not refugees, evacuees, the stranded, or them.  They are Americans.  They pay the taxes.  They are the same Americans that were rushed from the burning world trade center. They deserve the same respect and dignity that you and I deserve.

So I am retracting the word refugee from my vocabulary as of this instant. Not refugees. People. People that need help and are going to need help for quite awhile.

Please donate to the Red Cross to help the Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina.  Apparently the internet donations are over 14 million. . .way to go! Keep giving.  Give to the organizations you feel comfortable giving to. Sell your stuff on ebay and donate through the proceeds.

Thanks for your support. Sorry to sound so preachy.

perception

Regardless of the reality and the hardships involved in getting National Guard and relief supplies down to the areas affected by Katrina, the PERCEPTION is that the federal government DID NOT ACT QUICKLY ENOUGH.  No matter how people try to spin it, it is the perception that George Bush, Condi Rice, et al. did not really give two shits that one of America's major metropolitan cities was flooding. He didn't appear to care until he started getting skewered, until video started coming out from the convention center of non-violent, desperate people pleading to be fed, and evacuated. 

Sounds like it was common knowledge that the city's engineering infrastructure was not built to withstand a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude. Scott and I had discussed this on some of my visits down there. His friends had discussed the possibilities of losing everything, were a strong enough hurricane to hit the city. Scott had a couple of close calls that I remember while he has been down there (this being the worst, and last hopefully.)

So, a category 4 hurricane races toward, not only a city that is not built to withstand it, but a gulf coast that had probably barely rebuilt the infrastructure from last season's pummeling. . . we see it coming.

And there weren't more guardsmen ready to mobilize?  Gov't agencies in charge of delivering relief supplies like water, medicine, baby formula hadn't contacted the necessary suppliers to have them on STANDBY?  So what if it was a false alarm.  What the fuck has homeland security been doing with all these emergency drill excercises? 

Homeland Security is being put to the test. . .it's a bulshit department that was built to raise the public paranoia for a government that has been dependent on the fear of Americans to keep itself in office.  Sorry to get political, but it's clear that this administration, its departments, and its rhetoric are all walk and no talk. 

Armchair quarterbacks like myself are being openly lambasted for criticizing and gloating over the administration's "fumble."  I'm not gloating. I am asking questions.  Questions that deserve answers. What are my tax dollars paying for?  More guitar hoe-downs at the ranch?

Let me get back on point.  It would have been nice to see government response that was a little more anticipatory and at the ready, especially since its not like a hurricane is a complete unknown. It's NOT an earthquake. There was time to get shit together, make phone calls, have MORE resources ready to mobilize.  And for the president not to come out with statements before, during, and after the gulf was being pummeled by one of the strongest tropical storms on record? For it to look like he was AT LEAST, paying attention to what was unfolding down south?  Well, that just makes our man Bush look like a jackass.  What? Did he think the hurricane was just going to blow over a few trees and mobile homes?  Did he think he could just hop on TV and say "oh yeah, FEMA's on its way. Let's pray for the victims to stand strong", is that what he and his administration thought?

Very disapponted.

katrina resources -- typepad featured blogs

Typepad has found some blogs that have been started up by people this week in and around Hurricane Katrina.  People want to help and we all know blogs help us cut around the bureaucratic red tape.  Many Thanks to the folks that are offering help.

Katrina Housing & Transportation Resources - it is what it says it is

Hurricade - a resource blog, with some amazing resources. . .petfinder and ASPCA resources for all the lost pets and animals, how to help if you don't have money to donate(very cool-ebay is taking donations), the Katrina Help Wiki, are among the links this person has put on their blog.

Ernie the Attorney - an attorney from NOLA rides the storm out and mobilizes help resources through his blog

Hurricane Katrina - features links to critical numbers, survivor location tools, mental health resources in the Baton Rouge area, plus blog from a woman in Baton Rouge reacting to events.

Hurricane Watch according to blogger, on Tuesdaye his hurricane watch blog had 1,755 page views and 1,282 unique visitors.

Now that typepad has gottent the word out, let the viral marketing of the internet begin. links drive search engine relevancy, relevancy drives ranking, the better the ranks, the better the search results.  If the federal gov't can't put people and resources, perhaps the grassroots internet can.

abandoned military housing. . .use it for homeless Katrina refugees

There are so many displaced people. Where will they find housing? The government should consider repurposing the abandoned military housing from bases that Geoarge Bush has closed.

Also, are ALL the hotels and motels in the south filled to capacity? Can't the government set up some kind of write off for businesses that open their doors to refugees?  Surely there must be empty rooms that could be used.

Beside the convention center and the superdome, there are still people left scattered all over in a city that has no electricity, no clean water.  WTF??  Tsunami relief. . . much more impressive.

FEMA. . .Homeland Security. . .Get with it. 

I guess now we get to see how George Bush REALLY ACTS in the face of emergency and tragedy.   Curious that he was able to pull his shit together so quickly after 9/11 for WTC photo ops and not so able, even with advance warning from the  NOAA Hurricane center, to manage an adequate response to this complete systemic breakdown.  Something smells rotten in D.C. . .