You know, good, call the Feds on their failures, but why isn't he on the phone with Greyhound rounding up those buses? He says he needs 500 buses -- don't you think private bus companies would provide them if he promised that he'd figure out some way to pay?
If the problem is that the Feds wouldn't let them into the city for come reason, I want pictures of the mayor standing next to a stopped bus begging to be let in to get people out.
Re: Refugee camps.
I'm not sure it's such a good idea. Better than the super dome for sure, but it would soon be just as bad as the super dome (no ac, probably no running water, etc.). While it would work in teh short term, I think long term (more than 2 weeks), we need to think of more solutions.
I have to agree with #1. The city gov't has been pretty ineffectual this whole time, and now they aren't even in the city. If I were the mayor, I'd be in there at the convention center trying to do whatever I can to restore order. He doesn't have much of a city left to govern, and I'm pretty dismayed that he isn't in it.
Not to downplay the tragedy, but the nice thing about the hurricane and subsequent flooding is that it happened over multiple days, so we don't have to worry about media referring to it as 8/29, or whatever.
Hey, they come with names as much as babies come with names.
Canadian Urban Search and Rescue is on the scene as well. They have a post on the front page.
Didn't the federal govt declare a disaster area two days before the storm hit? Didn't that entail the federal govt arrogating some of local govt's powers? Let's make sure that Nagin is in fact capable of doing something before sh*tting all over him. In fact, given how devastated the city is and how he's been one of the ones jumping up and down about it for 3 years, I'm surprised it took him this long to snap. Or is he just another in a long line of New Orleanians who is well and truly because he did what the authorities told him to do?
(hey, I have power!)
Tweedle, what could Nagin do from the convention center? He couldn't call out, that I know of. And he'd be away from information and updates. He needs to be in the loop.
Nagin promised when he campaigned not to evacuate the city until direly necessary. I haven't heard much of a case that he should have evauated the city earlier. (But, I've mostly been watching TV, too.) I did think that Nagin gave a really good evacuation speech.
My biggest criticism with the evacuation is the lack of troop/personnel carriers getting people out of the city. I don't know why that wasn't done. We'd be facing tens of thousands dead instead of just thousands if Katrina had hit head on, as it looked like it was about to do.
I'm going to read on-line news a bit more to get updated and then go back down to the red cross.
Yeah, you know I slightly regretted that comment I made. What he could have done is been a leader at the scene. It doesn't seem like there was anyone there providing any leadership. A friend of mine and I were talking about that a bit today. But anyhow, you're right. He couldn't have done anything from in the city.
yes, there should have been national guard troops there much, much quicker.
It's the commute from Iraq: takes a while.
I think Nagin is in the city. Here's a blog with a link to an mp3 of a Nagin interview with him expressing his frustration. The blog looks interesting too.
L.!
Dude, to the extent you were relying on anyone here when you picked Tulane, my sincerest apology.
glad you're safe, L.
On the "why didn't people leave" issue, I heard that one of my old philosophy professors weathered the storm in New Orleans because by the time he tried to evacuate there was no gas.
L.:
Glad to hear you're home and safe.
FYI, the U of Minnesota is offering Tulane refugees admission. So if you're looking for a school to go to this year, and they were in the running in April, you might want to think about it.
Yeah, I don't think admission anywhere is going to be a problem. From that perspective, being a hurricane refugee is pretty awesome: I got into two Ivy League colleges in under thirty minutes, no sweat.
I still haven't decided what to do with my unexpected free time, though. I'm wary of enrolling in another school, because I don't know if or when Tulane will be back up and running, and I don't want to just abandon my scholarships there. On the other hand, my parents are planning to move to another city in the near future, so staying home and working might not be a terrific option either. I sent a letter to my Congressman to see if he'd give me a filing job or something, and I'm trying to get hold of someone with FEMA or the Red Cross who can give me information about volunteering to help fix up the hellhole that is New Orleans.
I don't know if or when Tulane will be back up and running
Not before next September, I'd bet. If you'd been there for long enough to be loyal to the place, that would be one thing, but under your circumstances I'd absolutely split for your current best option.
L.! Glad to hear from you. And what LB said. You don't want anything to do with New Orleans for the foreseeable future, so forget the filing job and get to the best school that'll have you (and won't land you deep in debt, of course).
Am I the only one who notices that L. is far too responsible for an 18 year old.
Good. I wonder what the explanation is.
Off to the RC.
far too responsible for an 18 year old
I left out the parts about migrant tomato picking and running away to New York City to become a skyscraper window washer.
L,
I think it should be go to NY to partay and become an actor, but what do I know?
I'm just glad to know you are safe. This is a bad situation.
"I'm wary of enrolling in another school, because I don't know if or when Tulane will be back up and running, and I don't want to just abandon my scholarships there."
Not this year; many schools likely will make efforts to get your scholarships transferred. Forget about Tulane; I'm sorry, but it's gone for now; it'll likely reconsitute, but not soon.
Tons more updates:
Convoys arrive; massive oil spill reported in Mississippi.
Fats Domino found again, this time presumably for good.
Messages from trapped people. I have no words.
Oh, no, it might be harder to cut Social Security and Medicaid; also, it's all the fault of homosexuals.
Charity Hospital evac resumed.
Zoomable satellite photo from this morning.
You can be a Red Cross volunteer and more.
More Interdictor and the sonic prototype being sent.
More from Houston; Astrodome gets own Zip Code.
And so on.
Fats Domino found again
Alex Chilton is still missing, though. :(
I read this after going through the baby thread, and was going to put it on there for contrast (or to help your mom's cause), but figured I'd put it here instead.
Official breaks for New Orleans college students.
(they didn't need me at the Red Cross tonight. In a way, that's good because it means lots of people are volunteering. But I keep watching all the footage of the helpless people and wish I could do more.)
Anyway, the news seems to be really hammering on Bush, and rightly so as far as I can tell. So I decide to see how the Right Wingers are spinning it. Check this out:
The City of New Orleans and its residents owe the President a profound debt of gratitude [for ordering the evacuation].
They pull a quote from Gov. Blanco saying Bush supported the decision, and reference New Orleans historical reluctance to order a mandatory evacuation, and, ergo, Bush saved the day. No. I watched that news conference, and another wherein Blanco talked about that phone call. She made it quite clear that she got the call from Bush as she and Mayor Nagin were on their way to issue the evacuation order.
I was going to email Hindrocket, but it seems he lists his phone number instead of email. Maybe I should call.
Michael, don't even bother; don't let him get to you. I didn't even have to click the link to know it was Hindrocket. He writes things like that just to piss off people of good conscience. Your trips to the Red Cross are about seven bajillion times more important than anything he does or you could do to him.
Well, already wrote him, but I won't let him bug me.
I did go to a shelter briefly tonight. It was a small one, but they had a kitchen. However, the guy in charge wouldn't allow the kitchen to be used. I'm not certain if he was under orders, or because health services had previously shut down a charity kitchen his church had run (I walked halfway in on a conversation in which he was telling that story).
He may have been right in some sense not to use the kitchen, and there was other food available, but geez, that's not that kind of thing we need right now.
Kanye West goes off-script, says "George Bush doesn't like black people."
I vote go to another school as well. Go for the upgrade.
LizardBreath,
Thanks for posting your letter to Mayor Bloomberg in the other thread. I'm planning on writing letters to my Senators and my rep about the incompetence at FEMA. I would like to see some heads roll, but I'm not the most articulate person in print, and I love having models to copy (I don't want to send a form letter, but I doubt that anyone reads these things very carefully, and I want to make sure that I get all the basic points down.)
I'd like scrutiny of the management (which I don't think is playing politics, but then I also think we ought to question the repeal of the estate tax--which may be politics, but not in the crass sense.) I mean, politics is just that which relates to the polis anyway.
My biggest issue as a voter is healthcare. I'd like to see medicare for all. Now maybe I only think this, because I care about healthcare so much, but I can't help thinking that it would be a lot easier for the dislocated people if there were no fear that they would lose their health insurance or if there were no worries about the paperwork. I think it is too crass to say just yet that Katrina is proof that Medicare ought to be expanded to include everyone, although I don't think that it's entirely wrong.
It isn't crass to use Katrina in an attempt to help poor people get insurance, I don't think. It would be crass to use Katrina to try to take insurance away from poor people. Not all politics is created equal. Some kinds of it are always crass, and some kinds never.
There was a time when fascism was a political position. That is, explicitly so. And at that time, it was always crass, and always odious. And it was never crass to oppose it.
We should remember that. It's hard, and I want to slough it off and make cock jokes most of the time. But avoiding this stuff is cowardly.
So anyway, I appreciate what you are doing, bg.
at the mineshaft.
Hooray! Best of luck, L.
It's a good thing you didn't listen to me, or you wouldn't have had this adventure.
(The Ivy's accepted you, but didn't offer financial aid? Or only accepted you until Tulane re-opened?)