. . . stereotyping innocent ghosts.

Posted by: Attila at 01:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 14 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . there's a movement afoot to recall Gov. Blanco. I'd love to see that happen.

(h/t: Reynolds, Goldstein)

Posted by: Attila at 09:10 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 28 words, total size 1 kb.

More here. I suspect the Golden State will even more fertile for this blogospheric grass-roots action than it is for lettuce and grapes.

Posted by: Attila at 09:07 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 29 words, total size 1 kb.

Help us to cut government waste.

Posted by: Attila at 07:51 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 22 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . she's going to collapse from dizziness. Or was that ditziness?

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila at 12:07 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 23 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . has a nice little summary on why the FEMA response to Katrina was faster and more efficient than what is usual and customary, and why the local and state authorities are supposed to be able to handle the situation for at least 72 hours.

Posted by: Attila at 11:46 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 51 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . compares Federal failures on 9/11 to local/state failures during Katrina, and asks which level of bureaucracy would you rather be let down by?

Certainly events in NO haven't shown us our favorite side of human nature: not for the most part.

Posted by: Attila at 01:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 46 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . Goldstein takes Newsweek to task, ever-so-gently, for an article that appears to ask the eternal question "who's your Daddy?"

And to answer itself, "The Federal Government, of course."

Posted by: Attila at 11:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 39 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . has a roundup on the Gretna bridge incident, wherein people from New Orleans were being cut off and not allowed out of the city. This roadblock may be the single worst scandal to emerge from Katrina.

One of the debates going on about this roadblock of the only dry route out of New Orleans has to do with whether Gretna police locked their city down out of racial motivations, or out of real fear that their town would be overwhelmed, or that criminals would cross the bridge and cause problems in their neighborhoods. All that aside, it still looks heartless: had I lived in Gretna, I would have been happy to take some of those people in, and I'll bet the town's residents feel that way too.

And, of course, the other question has to do with where the fucking Governor of Louisiana was at the time. You know: the chick who's trying to blame this all on the Feds, but wouldn't give them the authority to come in—nor use the National Guard to restore order so it would be legal for regular troops to take up positions to help.

UPDATE: Video here.

Posted by: Attila at 11:47 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 198 words, total size 1 kb.

Let's just Federalize all disaster preparations, and then get a dirty martini with three olives, made with Tanqueray Ten.

Goldstein attempts to point out the problems therewith, including that Constitution thingie.

Posted by: Attila at 08:14 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

An amazing eyewitness account from NOLA. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to verify it. But it's dramatic, for sure.

I'll snoop around over the weekend to see if I can authenticate it. Or, if you know its origins, leave the source in the comments.

UPDATE: The concensus appears to be that this narrative was strung together from a series of rumors. Unfortunately, we don't know which ones are true and which aren't. Like the Titanic disaster, this situation will be argued about for years. If there are hearings, perhaps historians will be able to figure out the main strands of responsibility—beyond Mother Nature's fury.

I did see the leftist bias in this narrative, but there are some factual problems: C-rations haven't been used in years (they are all MREs now), and National Guard units are deployed as units, rather than one guy from this one, two guys from that one, and the like. A lot of people have expressed skepticism about the notion that any authorities would actually physically confiscate food from citizens.

I do suspect there are elements of truth in this, but which aspects one tends to believe will probably depend upon one's political leanings.

That's why I'd like to see hearings: it would be nice to have someone other than Snopes trying to separate fact from fiction.

Posted by: Attila at 01:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 222 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . which was apparently higher in that state under Bush vs. Clinton.

Posted by: Attila at 03:49 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 24 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . tell us it's time to re-think politics in Louisiana and in New Orleans. Too late, for sure—but perhaps not too little.

Posted by: Attila at 03:34 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 30 words, total size 1 kb.

Behold the Nagin "Black Magic" Water Park. Isn't it spooky?

Posted by: Attila at 12:02 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 18 words, total size 1 kb.

Authorities were . . . castigated by British bus driver Ged Scott, from Wallasey, Merseyside, who was on holiday in the New Orleans area.

He stayed in the Ramada Hotel during and after the devastation with his wife, Sandra, and seven-year-old son Ronan. At one stage, Mr Scott, 36, had to wade through filthy water to barricade the hotel doors against looters.

He told the Liverpool Daily Post: "I couldn't describe how bad the authorities were. Just little things like taking photographs of us, as we are standing on the roof waving for help, for their own little snapshot albums.

"At one point, there were a load of girls on the roof of the hotel saying 'Can you help us?' and the policemen said 'Show us what you've got' and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts. When the girls refused, they said 'Fine' and motored off down the road in their boat."

Via Lair.

Posted by: Attila at 10:38 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 162 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . is Goldstein a little tense?

Posted by: Attila at 04:00 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 16 words, total size 1 kb.

I still have a lot of entries from my stay in Scottsdale to bring up out of "draft" format and get onto the main page.

In the meantime, I've been listening to a lot of criticism of New Orleans officials—and some in Louisiana—who just did not appear to take this impending crisis seriously until it was too late. Some people chalk this up to the corruption that's rampant in the Big Easy, but I'm not so sure.

I called my husband yesterday morning from the desert to ask if this kind of negligent response would have occurred in Chicago under the first Mayor Daley.

"No, no," he tells me. "They were crooks, but they were competent crooks. That's why the people of Chicago went back to the Daley dynasty: ultimately, the matter of honesty mattered less than having a well-run city."

Posted by: Attila at 11:49 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 157 words, total size 1 kb.

—who seems a little defensive.

Posted by: Attila at 03:34 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 11 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . seems a mite irritated about all those unused buses owned by the City of New Orleans. Instead of carrying thousands of people to safety, they are now ruined by flooding, rusting away with massive oil slicks caused by their engines.

There's even a satellite photo showing how close the buses were to a freeway that led right to the Superdome.

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila at 02:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
Post contains 69 words, total size 1 kb.

. . . the difference between "looting" and "emergency commandeering of supplies."

Or they should.

Of course, they should also know the difference between "rioting" and "rebellion."

As the Los Angeles riots of 1992 commenced, no one was under any illusions about what it meant: color was irrelevant, and the only distinction to be made was between those who had some kind of values and those who were using the situation as an excuse to loot stores—and worse, much worse. I drove around town then in order to get across it—avoiding the center of the city—and spent the night in my boyfriend's more quiet neighborhood.

First, of course, I had to spend an hour in line at a Glendale supermarket, rubbing elbows with black and white and Asian people who all understood the score: there is something broken in human nature, and when it's not practical to fight it, you need to get out of the way.

So we all loaded up our grocery carts and prepared to stay off the streets for however many days it took before the thugs lost their stranglehold on L.A.

It appears that it could have been a lot worse. God have mercy on those who took advantage of the situation in New Orleans in order to commit violent acts.

I'm sure there's a special place in Hell for them.

Posted by: Attila at 01:47 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 230 words, total size 1 kb.