Today's hurricane outrage.

[theweaselking]

Media Matters on the Washington Post reprinting Bush's lies without fact-checking them.

A whole collection of FEMA's fuckups.

Speaking of which, the FEMA director has been bitchslapped, stripped of his authority, and assigned an "assistant" who will take over all his duties.

The forgotten survivors: Finally, help is arriving for the stranded and the left behind. Graffiti outside the staging area to leave the dead city: "Mortui Vivis Praecipant"

The diseases that hurricane victims are at risk of.

DOD briefing: Everything went exactly according to plan, executed flawlessly. Inexplicably, the DOD did not include visual aids. Respectful Of Otters has provided them.

Chief counsel for the AFA: Looting food and water makes you Hitler.

John Stossel: Price gouging is not just moral, but virtuous and should be encouraged. (The column Stossel is plagiarising is available here)

The Wall Street Journal, on why New Orleans needs to be rebuilt without all those dirty poor people:

"The power elite of New Orleans -- whether they are still in the city or have moved temporarily to enclaves such as Destin, Fla., and Vail, Colo. -- insist the remade city won't simply restore the old order. New Orleans before the flood was burdened by a teeming underclass, substandard schools and a high crime rate. The city has few corporate headquarters.

"The new city must be something very different, Mr. Reiss says, with better services and fewer poor people. "Those who want to see this city rebuilt want to see it done in a completely different way: demographically, geographically and politically," he says. "I'm not just speaking for myself here. The way we've been living is not going to happen again, or we're out."

One last paranoid thought:
1. There's a shitload of homeless, jobless people coming out of New Orleans.
2. There's that little Iraq thing going on, desperately in need of bodies and offering... shelter, food, and money.

Comments

[iamdazey.livejournal.com]

Soooo... If this Coast Guard guy is so great at handling emergencies, why didn't Shrub appoint him to begin with, instead of saddling us with the ineptitude that is Brown?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Brown is a friend of a friend, who made a large campaign donation.

I read the full WSJ article

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

It doesn't read to me like it's advocating the position of New Orleans' power elite (even though said elite are essentially the Journal's target audience). Rather, it seems to be pointing out the class division that has been a major feature of New Orleans' social structure for a very long time.

Of course, we already know, thanks to all the reporting on the subject, that storm exacerbated rather than equalized the haves and have-nots of the entire Gulf Coast region. Rather than struggling to survive, the haves are struggling for position.

All that said, Reiss sounds like a major asshole.

paranoia

[broken-pistol.livejournal.com]

that or all of a sudden we are going to have some horrible attack from a "lawless new orleans terrorist band" that will send the country reeling and gwb taking "credit" for doing something noble.