Category: Old Dish

“I build websites for a living. FEMA and all government websites must abide by the following Section 508 accessibility guidelines. The law says that all government sites must abide by the World Wide Web Consortium guidelines for accessibility. The Consortium has recently addressed the issue of websites that are accessible to only a single browser and have said that this does not comport with the law. You can read it here. So, as of this August 22 ruling, FEMA is actually breaking the law with their website. Admittedly, the ruling has only been out for a few weeks, and it is reasonable to give people an adjustment time. But this is probably a problem they could fix faster than they were able to get their asses to New Orleans.”

Another first-hand account of amazing personal courage and brutal government inefficiency and stupidity:

What you will not see, but what we witnessed,were the real heroes and sheroes of the hurricane relief effort: the working class of New Orleans. The maintenance workers who used a fork lift to carry the sick and disabled. The engineers, who rigged, nurtured and kept the generators running. The electricians who improvised thick extension cords stretching over blocks to share the little electricity we had in order to free cars stuck on rooftop parking lots. Nurses who took over for mechanical ventilators and spent many hours on end manually forcing air into the lungs of unconscious patients to keep them alive. Doormen who rescued folks stuck in elevators. Refinery workers who broke into boat yards, “stealing” boats to rescue their neighbors clinging to their roofs in flood waters. Mechanics who helped hot-wire any car that could be found to ferry people out of the City. And the food service workers who scoured the commercial kitchens improvising communal meals for hundreds of those stranded.

Most of these workers had lost their homes, and had not heard from members of their families, yet they stayed and provided the only infrastructure for the 20% of New Orleans that was not under water.

On Day 2, there were approximately 500 of us left in the hotels in the French Quarter. We were a mix of foreign tourists, conference attendees like ourselves, and locals who had checked into hotels for safety and shelter from Katrina. Some of us had cell phone contact with family and friends outside of New Orleans. We were repeatedly told that all sorts of resources including the National Guard and scores of buses were pouring in to the City. The buses and the other resources must have been invisible because none of us had seen them.

We decided we had to save ourselves. So we pooled our money and came up with $25,000 to have ten buses come and take us out of the City. Those who did not have the requisite $45.00 for a ticket were subsidized by those who did have extra money. We waited for 48 hours for the buses, spending the last 12 hours standing outside, sharing the limited water, food, and clothes we had. We created a priority boarding area for the sick, elderly and new born babies. We waited late into the night for the “imminent” arrival of the buses. The buses never arrived. We later learned that the minute the arrived to the City limits, they were commandeered by the military.

Read the whole thing. Yeah, blame the locals. Many of the locals were fricking heroes. One thing we have to learn from this. If a terrorist attack strikes, you have to fend for yourself. We have no competent government to deal with these things; and, given Bush’s track record for reforming his own administration, we are at serious risk for another three years. Build up your own food supplies; line up your own evacuation plans; care for your own sick and needy and old. The government is broken.

A first-hand account of what actually happened to one stranded New Orleans victim of Katrina:

Denise said she thought she was in hell. they were there for 2 days, with no water, no food. no shelter. Denise, her mother (63 years old), her niece (21 years old), and 2-year-old grandniece. when they arrived, there were already thousands of people there. they were told that buses were coming. police drove by, windows rolled up, thumbs up signs. national guard trucks rolled by, completely empty, soldiers with guns cocked and aimed at them. nobody stopped to drop off water. a helicopter dropped a load of water, but all the bottles exploded on impact due to the height of the helicopter.

the first day (Wednesday) 4 people died next to her. the second day (Thursday) 6 people died next to her. Denise told me the people around her all thought they had been sent there to die. again, nobody stopped. the only buses that came were full; they dropped off more and more people, but nobody was being picked up and taken away. they found out that those being dropped off had been rescued from rooftops and attics; they got off the buses delirious from lack of water and food. completely dehydrated. the crowd tried to keep them all in one area; Denise said the new arrivals had mostly lost their minds. they had gone crazy.

inside the convention center, the place was one huge bathroom. in order to shit, you had to stand in other people’s shit. the floors were black and slick with shit. most people stayed outside because the smell was so bad. but outside wasn’t much better: between the heat, the humidity, the lack of water, the old and very young dying from dehydration… and there was no place to lay down, not even room on the sidewalk. they slept outside Wednesday night, under an overpass.

Denise said yes, there were young men with guns there. but they organized the crowd. they went to Canal Street and “looted,” and brought back food and water for the old people and the babies, because nobody had eaten in days. when the police rolled down windows and yelled out “the buses are coming,” the young men with guns organized the crowd in order: old people in front, women and children next, men in the back. just so that when the buses came, there would be priorities of who got out first.

Denise said the fights she saw between the young men with guns were fist fights. she saw them put their guns down and fight rather than shoot up the crowd. but she said that there were a handful of people shot in the convention center; their bodies were left inside, along with other dead babies and old people.

Denise said the people thought there were being sent there to die. lots of people being dropped off, nobody being picked up. cops passing by, speeding off. national guard rolling by with guns aimed at them. and yes, a few men shot at the police, because at a certain point all the people thought the cops were coming to hurt them, to kill them all. she saw a young man who had stolen a car speed past, cops in pursuit; he crashed the car, got out and ran, and the cops shot him in the back. in front of the whole crowd. she saw many groups of people decide that they were going to walk across the bridge to the west bank, and those same groups would return, saying that they were met at the top of the bridge by armed police ordering them to turn around, that they weren’t allowed to leave.

They thought they were being sent there to die.

Is screwed up – if you’re not a Windows + IE person.

Mark Blumenthal helps you make sense of it all. Bottom line:

The trend in the President’s job rating on responding to Katrina has been a steady decline over the last week, a story not told by any other poll. Most important (at least to MP) is that interviewers conducted last night tend to confirm the drop in Bush’s rating seen in the polls done in the heart of the weekend.

We’ll see. Asking people if the president should be “blamed” for a hurricane is not a good question. Asking them if they disapprove of his response makes more sense. Last Wednesday, 39 percent disapproved. By Monday, 55 percent did. How that squares with this poll I don’t know.

More and more voices add to the chorus. There’s a Fire Michael Brown website and an online petition. More blog voices include Greg Djerejian, and calls for Brown’s accountability here, here, here, here, here, and here.

“Doubtless certain of my readers will again leap to the tired claim that I “hate Bush”. Sorry, but a quick read of my blog will not support that conversation-killing thesis. I don’t hate Bush. I simply wish to hold him responsible to do his job. Do I deny that there is an entitlement mentality? Of course not. But it is not an expression of entitlement mentality to expect the state to ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense. It is not an entitlement mentality to expect to be safe from rape in emergency facilitiies provided by the state. It’s not an entitlement mentality to think you shouldn’t have to watch your baby die of hydration because the Feds couldn’t figure out how to airlift water to helpless thirsty people for five frickin’ days and, in their world-historical and criminal incompetence, actually turned offers of water away.
The Rush Limbaughs of the world will have ample opportunity to blame poor people for foolishly expecting the state to do what the Founders thought it should do: ensure domestic tranquility and provide for the common defense… Bush does have a spin machine. And it’s already swinging into high gear to sayi loudly, “Don’t look at Bush! Look! Incompetent state and local guys! Look! Stupid poor people! Look! Thugs!”
So long as Bush remains the King of Massive Government Spending Coupled with the Promise of “Homeland Security”, guys like Limbaugh are going to have a colossally difficult time shifting the blame for this debacle away from Bush. That’s not “Bush hatred”. That’s cold logic.” – theocon Mark Shea, getting the issue right.

“Katrina is a consequence of the destruction of [Gaza’s] Gush Katif [slate of Jewish communities] with America’s urging and encouragement. The U.S. should have discouraged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from implementing the Gaza evacuation rather than pushing for it and pressuring Israel into concessions.” – Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lewin, executive director of the Rabbinic Congress for Peace, in the crack-pot, far right magazine, WorldNetDaily.

“There is much to be said and done about the manmade annihilation of New Orleans, caused NOT by a hurricane but by the very specific decisions made by the Bush administration in the past four and a half years.” – Michael Moore. Memo to Moore: Katrina was Category Four hurricane that almost made a direct hit. Once again, the far left does its best to shore up the president; and change the subject from his incompetence to their unhinged extremism.

Even the Washington Times states the obvious, dismissing the “locals are to blame” spin. When Bush has lost the Washington Times, he really only has Fox News (minus Shep Smith) and Hugh Hewitt to fall back on. The Miami Herald calls for Brown to go here.