Blogs / Cosmic Variance

Not me — I’m blogging from the Denver airport, on my way from Boston to California. Why someone who lives in Chicago would be flying from Boston to California is too complicated to explain.

Despite the weak coffee here, I’m sure I’m in much more comfortable surroundings than Lindsay Beyerstein from Majikthise, Bob Brigham from Swing State Project (and now Operation Flashlight), and Kyle Shank from Americablog. (It’s not perfectly clear who all is going along, so there may be others for all I know.) They have made the trip down to New Orleans, both to report what they see and to help out where possible. (For example, working to extend the Voting Rights Act to prevent evacuees from become involuntarily disenfranchised.)

The reports are chilling. Lindsay:

The Convention Center was truly horrifying: A sea of filthy orange-upolstered institutional chairs. Blocks and blocks of chairs set out on the sidewalk. Mountains of trash. Abandoned supplies rotting in the sun — cases of muffins, an entire crate of coffee creamers upended, dirty needles, unopened bottles of sparkling cider that looked like champagne, rhinestone earings still in their packages, a tiny Spiderman flip-flop, water bottles full of urine, strollers, several barbeques… The 82nd Airborne was on the scene in their red berets. Black Hawk helicopters were taking off and landing across the parking lot. It’s really something to see a Black Hawk skimming the horizon of a devastated American city.

Kyle:

Unreal.

That’s the only word I can think of to describe what I’ve experienced today. The moment you step in it’s as if you’ve entered another reality. Helicopters dart overhead and pound a rhythm into the horrific scene. The stench of death and suffering overwhelm the senses. It’s a smell that doesn’t make sense until you’ve seen the filth the victims had to cope with. Try to think about all the worst possible scents combined; I guarantee it’s worse. Chairs, clothing, and drinks remain in the same position as if those people just vanished into the air you’re breathing in. Your mind goes numb during that brief inhale and you can only try to imagine what these abandoned citizens went through. Being in New Orleans is like soaking yourself in unthinkable despair.

And Bob:

We are in Jefferson Parish, just outside of New Orleans. At the National Guard checkpoint, they are under orders to turn away all media. All of the reporters are turning they’re TV trucks around.

Things are so bad, Bush is now censoring all reporting from NOLA. The First Amendment sank with the city.

Fortunately they managed to make it in, with the 82nd airborne. Keep checking back at each blog as updates appear.

Keith Olberman discusses whether there are multiverses right here in the USA.

Remarkable, a real live news anchor actually comparing official’s words with their actions. I don’t think I’ve ever seen clip juxtaposition like that except on the “fake news” daily show.

For more of what happened when, see the timelines at Think Progress and Talking Points Memo.

Hi, my name is JoAnne, I am female, and I’m a shoe-a-holic. I love to shop for shoes. Shoe sales can stop me dead in my tracks. Whenever I travel, the joke in my family is “how many pairs of shoes did you bring?” This seems to be a common affliction with women. However, some of us seem to be more addicted than others. Just look at the reports of Condi Rice from the 2nd Sept edition of the Gawker: shopping for shoes (apparently costing thousands of dollars) at Ferragamo’s last week during her NYC vacation. Not that she had anything more pressing to attend to….

I sincerely hope the shoes were at least on sale.

Folks, here’s a link to the Katrina timeline. Just in case anyone actually doubted whether the state of Lousiana asked for Federal help - you can read the documents for yourself.

Okay, a new contest: come up with more appropriate acronyms for FEMA. No profanity allowed, despite the obvious temptation. For inspirational purposes, visit Shakespeare’s Sister and check out Cookie Jill’s list of above-and-beyond measures by this fine agency — not simply everyday unhelpfulness, but making an active effort to prevent anyone else from helping.

Here is my favorite, unimpeachable in its objectivity because it is from FEMA’s very own press release!

First Responders Urged Not To Respond To Hurricane Impact Areas Unless Dispatched By State, Local Authorities

Release Date: August 29, 2005
Release Number: HQ-05-174

WASHINGTON D.C. — Michael D. Brown, Under Secretary of Homeland Security for Emergency Preparedness and Response and head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), today urged all fire and emergency services departments not to respond to counties and states affected by Hurricane Katrina without being requested and lawfully dispatched by state and local authorities under mutual aid agreements and the Emergency Management Assistance Compact.

“The response to Hurricane Katrina must be well coordinated between federal, state and local officials to most effectively protect life and property,” Brown said. “We appreciate the willingness and generosity of our Nation’s first responders to deploy during disasters. But such efforts must be coordinated so that fire-rescue efforts are the most effective possible.”

Thank goodness the benevolent hand of Michael Brown was able to prevent any unlawful rescue operations from messing things up in New Orleans. Who know what kind of confusion might have resulted if things hadn’t been so well-coordinated?

Watching the grilling that Tony Blair has received from the British media since his decision to involve Britain in the Iraq war, one cannot help but make comparisons with the kid gloves approach of the mainstream U.S. media to the outrageous behavior of the Bush administration.

The BBC is now carrying a viewpoint article, titled Has Katrina Saved the U.S. Media? (OK, I wasn’t particularly imaginative with my title, I know), which emphasizes this point. The article suggests that the outrage seen in such unlikely places as Fox News may signal a turning point in this trend, and that the gloves may now come off in the coverage of our government’s incompetence.

One interesting part of the article is a very succinct explanation of why many people view the mainstream U.S. media with such suspicion.

Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina.

National politics reporters and anchors here come largely from the same race and class as the people they are supposed to be holding to account.

They live in the same suburbs, go to the same parties, and they are in debt to the same huge business interests.

Giant corporations own the networks, and Washington politicians rely on them and their executives to fund their re-election campaigns across the 50 states.

It is a perfect recipe for a timid and self-censoring journalistic culture that is no match for the masterfully aggressive spin-surgeons of the Bush administration.

But last week the complacency stopped, and the moral indignation against inadequate government began to flow, from slick anchors who spend most of their time glued to desks in New York and Washington.

It’s an interesting suggestion. However, I can’t help but be cynical and expect that it won’t last, essentially for the reasons in the first few paragraphs, which I don’t expect to change. But I guess we’ll see.

There’ll be plenty of time to discuss the ramifications of this, but I thought I’d just mention, in case you haven’t seen it, that Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist died last night. As The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON, Sunday, Sept. 4 - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist died Saturday night of the thyroid cancer he had battled for nearly a year, opening a second Supreme Court vacancy just days before Senate confirmation hearings were to begin to fill the seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Kathleen Arburg, the court’s public information officer, said Chief Justice Rehnquist, 80, had died at his home in Arlington, Va., surrounded by his three children. She said he had been working at the court during the summer recess until his health declined a “precipitous decline” in the last few days.

Politically, in a sense this isn’t as big a deal as O’Connor’s resignation, because Rehnquist was really never a swing vote. On the other hand, the President has shown a knack for choosing people for top jobs who are even worse than I had imagined they could be. So I’m understandably nervous concerning who we might see nominated.

I don’t expect it to happen, but it would be an interesting state of affairs if O’Connor were to make it known she’d be prepared to stay on as Chief, were it to be offered to her.

I’m back from a brief but busy trip to Syracuse, where I hung out with co-blogger Mark and gave a talk or two. No time for any substantive blogging, which is just as well, as the rest of the crew has been discussing the Katrina fiasco better than I could have.

In fact, had I been stuck in front of the computer with nothing to do but blog, I would likely have posted something early on about how this is no time for partisan political sniping — it’s a massive human disaster, you can’t blame the President for the weather, and there will be plenty of time for sorting out responsibility later.

What a mistake that would have been. Sure, you can’t blame Bush for the hurricane, but the tragedy has been needlessly magnified by massive incompetence at all levels, foremost at the very top. The extent to which things have been screwed up is only gradually becoming clear, but we already know that the response strategy included funneling large numbers of poor people into the convention center and locking them in, while refusing help from other countries and cities, and keeping out the Red Cross on the theory that the refugees wouldn’t leave the city if there were food and water and medicine there.

The incompetence is staggering. If nothing else, the one thing that should have been figured out after September 11 is how to coordinate a response to a large-scale disaster. Don’t you think they’ve had time to settle on a plan? Of course they have, but perhaps the decision to gut FEMA rather than strengthen it was a little shortsighted. And perhaps political hack Michael Brown’s job experience as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association — from which he was fired for incompetence — didn’t really prepare him for the realities of being Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Oh yes, and perhaps it would have been good if more of the National Guard were here guarding the nation, rather than somewhere else.

Yes, there will be time for recriminations later. (And for gathering more synonyms for “incompetence,” I’m running low.) But as James Wolcott stresses, later never comes for these people. Right now, when the stupidity and mendacity of the administration is visible in sharp relief, is the best time to hold them responsible for their mistakes. I’m sure there is plenty of blame to go around, and I’m sure a lot of it will deservedly fall on state and local officials, and I’m sure many of them will be Democrats; it doesn’t matter, anyone who failed in their job in this time of crisis deserves to be held accountable. And it starts at the top.

Update: If you’d like to see an actual attempt to use the disaster for a brazenly partisan political advantage, see this. (Via Pandagon.)

The independent UK thinks Americans might have questions. In an article entitled “The questions a shocked America is asking its President”, they ask:

• Why has it taken George Bush five days to get to New Orleans?

• How could the world’s only superpower be so slow in rescuing its own people?
• Why did he cut funding for flood control and emergency management?
• Why did it take so long to send adequate National Guard forces to keep law and order?
• How can the US take Iraq, a country of 25m people, in three weeks but fail to rescue 25,000 of its own citizens from a sports arena in a big American city?

A BBC correspondent has some thoughts on that, starting with:

The only difference between the chaos of New Orleans and a Third World disaster operation, he said, was that a foreign dictator would have responded better.

Meanwhile, CNN has a new article up on “The Big disconnect on New Orleans” which compares official statements of the crisis to CNN reporting over the past couple of days.
UPDATE: Now on CNN, meterologists discussing what they were forcasting for last friday, 2-1/2 days before the Hurricane hit land. They were forcasting a Category 4 hurricane, which was widely predicted to completely flood New Orleans.

Also worth reading: Salon has up several pages of reader contributed stories from people who were in the area.

Apparently last night (6 DAYS after the hurricane )there were still ~5000 people still stuck the Superdome, which is up to the hilt in filth, without food or water.
The National Guard is was preventing people (well, at least the poor black ones) from leaving the city, controlling access to the bridge that is the only way out. At the same time, the Red Cross not been allowed into New Orleans to help the people stuck there (!?!?!)

Shepard Smith and Geraldo Rivera went absolutely nuts on FOX last night, both of them almost in tears at the desperation of the situation. Crooks and Liars has the video. This is extremely powerful, watch it.

Update: Apparently they’ve finally got on the ball. Geraldo was on FOX recently reporting that the Navy is now evacuating about 100 people every 10 minutes in Chinook helicopters. Why oh why didn’t this happen 4 days ago?

President announced in his radio adress that he’s finally sending in the 82nd airborne. Again, why didn’t this happen 4 days ago?

Reports are coming in from all over about how help was offered from neighboring states and localities, but the approval from above didn’t get through –
Talking Points Memo reports that Lousiana Gov. Blanco accepted an offer of state National Guard troops from New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday, just before the storm hit. But the paperwork from Washington, allowing the troops to deploy, didn’t come until Thursday…