August 2007 Archives
Tancredo, a Colorado congressman, said "enough is enough," aiming to head off requests for more money to help New Orleans recover from the hurricane that ravaged the city and much of the Gulf Coast two years ago this week.Tancredo tossed about the figure $114 billion as how much the feds have given New Orleans. Reality, of course, is a bit different:
Blanco said the $114 billion figure Tancredo referred to was an allocation spread among five states - Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Florida - in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma.Saying Tancredo is an asshole is so redundant. Oh, what the heck, it's Friday. What an asshole! There's no real arguing with stupidity of this magnitude, but the red-staters of Louisiana should start asking the other GOP candidates if they agree with Tancredo. Someone should ask Piyush the same question.
This prank is on the level of an MIT "hack":
Morning Edition, August 31, 2007 Kyle Garcher, a student in Hilliard, Ohio, pulled a prank. He put pieces of colored paper on the bleachers for the high school football game with a cross-town rival. Hundreds of Darby High fans were told that if they all held up the paper, it would spell "Go Darby." Darby fans didn't realize when they held up the papers, they really spelled "We Suck." Garcher was suspended, which gives him time to review the triumph on YouTube.
Shame they had to suspend the kid. I hope a school like MIT, known for such creativity, gives him a scholarship.
The focus shifted from water back to people on Wednesday the 31st. The crews working the levees managed to close the 17th Street Canal breach, so at least the water was no longer coming into the city. Now the problem was getting the water out of the city. This was a huge issue, because the city was without electricity. The city's system of pumps would eventually lower the level of water in the drainage canals so the water in the neighorhoods would drain into them, but those pumps required electricity to get moving. That would still be several days away; the water wasn't going to drain naturally, since the city is lower than the lake and the river.
This meant that the people in downtown New Orleans were still stuck. National Guardsmen from outside the Gulf Coast area who had the proper equipment to handle such a disaster were being mobilized, but they were still days away. If you've ever seen a military convoy traveling on an interstate highway, you can appreciate the situation. Those big vehicles don't really go faster than 40-50mph, and there's a lot of ground to cover between Pennsylvania and New Orleans.
What amazed everyone was the total lack of air support to the afflicted areas. A couple weeks later, on The Daily Show, Brian Williams commented that, if the army wanted to build a bridge someplace in Iraq, airmobile units would bring the equipment to the desired location.
That about summed it up. The Bush administration had created a situation where the army could not do the same thing in New Orleans. The Coast Guard and the few Navy helicopters in service in the area were still conducting search-and-rescue missions. Medical units were airlifting sick and injured folks to Louis Armstrong International Airport in Kenner. Besides, to support the numbers of people stuck at Da Dome and the Convention Center would require something akin to the Berlin Airlift.
The planes and helicopters weren't just unavailable, they weren't even in the country. One of the things that has never truly been addressed, mainly because Liebermann is chairman of the Homeland Security committee in the Senate, is the extent to which the disrespectful piece of shit who lives in the White House has degraded our national capability to respond to an emergency. It's a 900-pound gorilla nobody wants to talk about. And they can get away with it because, as far as our leaders were concerned, these were just a bunch of looting and pillaging jungle bunnies anyway.
Leave it to the Fixed Noise Channel to show the Eebil Coloreds at their worst. While CNN and MSNBC were showing the plight of those trapped at the Convention Center, FNC had round-the-clock footage of black folks carting off video games, wide-screen TVs and other merchandise from stores that's not quite what you'd characterize as necessary for survival. Cleaning out the Winn-Dixie and the Walgreen's of water and canned food made sense; stealing the Gamecubes and TVs at a time when there wasn't even electricity to operate the pumps gave those predisposed to judging all black folks as theives more ammunition than they needed. Viewers of FNC saw that Apocalypse Now! was rapidly becoming Apocalypse New Orleans.
Then perception became reality. Looters on the West Bank of the Mississippi looted Oakwood Mall, located about half a mile from the foot of the Crescent City Connection, the huge bridge that links downtown with the neighborhood of Algiers and, just past Algiers, the city of Gretna in Jefferson Parish.
Now, stop for a moment and think about the shopping mall closest to where you are right now being burned to the ground There was no way firefighters could save Oakwood. Even though the west bank neighborhoods did not flood, power was still out and water pressure in the system was horribly low. All that could be done was to make sure the flames didn't spread past the mall.
As the mall burned, it was clear that the situation in New Orleans was not going to improve. NOPD and other officials were telling tourists and others in the downtown area to go up on the Crescent City Connection and walk over to Gretna, where they would be picked up and bused outside the flood zone for evacuation. So, several hundred people began to walk up the onramps of the bridge, in a scene reminiscent of 9/11/2001, where millions of people left Manhattan on foot.
But the scene changed from something from 2001 to something from a post-nuclear-attack novel.
My imagination is the product of a lot of 1960s science fiction novels. I grew up on the works of Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, and many others. One of the most common themes of the genre at this time was survival, both long- and short-term. Science fiction was popular because if we can make it the stars, it means we survived the threat of nuclear destruction that was the Cold War. Short-term survival was also a common theme, and one of my favorite novels with this theme is Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. This novel tells the story of people living in Central Florida, and their struggle to survive after a nuclear confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Never in my life did I dream that I would ever see a confrontation in my home town that looked like it could come out of such a novel.
The people walking across the Crescent City Connection were greeted on the western side of the bridge by armed police officers from the City of Gretna and deputies of the Jefferson Parish Sheriff's Office. When the crowd approached, the Gretna officers actually fired at the evacuees, shooting shotguns over their heads. The crowd was told to go back to New Orleans, that they weren't welcome in Gretna, and that the police had no intentions of letting them do to Gretna what had been done to New Orleans. Gretna was not going to become another Superdome, said one officer.
Those who would defend Chief Arthur Lawson and his crackers, er, officers in Gretna will say they were justified in keeping evacuees from New Orleans off the West Bank because they were keeping more people like those who burned Oakwood Mall out of their community. They point to that endless loop of TV-stealing Eebil Coloreds from FNC and feel no remorse about helping people who now going on 48 hours without food or water.
What they don't tell you is that it would have been very easy to help these folks with minimal threat to their city.
The Crescent City Connection is actually two cantilever bridges that rise over a hundred feet above the Mississippi River. The supporting highway configuration is eight lanes wide on the west bank side. These merge into exit lanes going into the New Orleans neighborhood of Algiers, and six lanes (three in either direction) become the West Bank Expressway. Officially, this highway is a "business" spur of US90, and there are proposals to enhance this highway and link it and the rest of US90 from metro New Orleans to they city of Lafayette in Southwest Louisiana to I-49, which currently runs from Lafayette north to Shreveport.
Had the Gretna crackers cops allowed the evacuees to cross the bridge, they could have easily contained them on the three outbound lanes of the expressway. The West Bank Expressway is elevated as it runs through Gretna. All it would have taken the Gretna police and the JPSO would have been to station officers and deputies at the exits of the elevated highway to keep the Eebil Coloreds from invading their town. Buses could have picked up these people and brought them back across the river via the Huey P. Long bridge (located about 15 miles up the river in Jefferson Parish), then out to the airport.
But Arthur Lawson thought it was a better idea to threaten to kill these people.
The defense mounted by the citizens of Gretna of their police department in the wake of this incident was predictable. I hope for their sake that someone shows them more mercy and consideration if their lives are ever turned upside down like those of the folks on the East Bank.
It's significant that, two years later, the main Republican candidate in the election for LA-Gov this year, Piyush Jindal (R-LA01), accepted the endorsement of the Jefferson Parish Harry Lee and Chief Arthur Lawson on the steps of Gretna City Hall. Harry Lee is widely considered to be one of the most racist law enforcement executives in the country, having publicly stated his goal is to keep blacks from New Orleans out of Jefferson Parish back in the 1980s.
Watching/hearing/reading all this unfold while in Shreveport was just astounding. On one level, I was very thankful that I had my family safely away. We still didn't have any word on the condition of our Metairie neighborhood. Had the lawlessness spread out that far? Was our home safe?
But we had other issues to deal with at this point. By now, it was clear that we weren't going to get back home for at least another week, if not more. Some were predicting that schools in metro New Orleans would not be able to re-open for at least a month. My older son, Justin, had just started his senior year. A delay of a month could seriously threaten his future. He was applying for a NROTC scholarship and wanted to go to either MIT or Georgia Tech. I called my best friend for 30 years, who lives in Houston and has two sons close to ours in age. He in turn got on the phone to the principals of the schools his kids attended, to see if they could help us out. Watching and waiting was the name of the game.
Oh, and we bought a new car that Wednesday as well, a Dodge Stratus. The people at Shreveport Dodge were wonderful to us, giving us a great price (it was the last day of the month, after all, and car dealers are always under pressure to improve the current month's sales figures), and smoothing the paperwork involved with the purchase for two people still in shock about what was happening at home. I'll never forget that.
I still wouldn't buy it, but I"m sure there will be a huge market for unlocked iPhones if this kid's technique can be duplicated:
A New Jersey teenager has cut a deal to trade a hacked iPhone for a new set of wheels and three further iPhones, Yahoo! reports.Seventeen-year-old George Hotz, of Glen Rock, made the announcement on his blog, having successfully unlocked the Jesus phone. Duly released from the shackles of AT&T, the device was then swiftly offered for sale.
Hotz said: "Terry Daidone, the founder of Certicell contacted me this morning, and offered to make a trade for the iPhone. I traded it for a sweet Nissan 350Z and 3 8GB iPhones." He described the trade as "a great end to a great summer", and he can only hope AT&T's attack lawyers don't provoke a sudden autumn chill.
The death star is powerful, though. Look out for the guy in the black breathing mask at your doorstep.
If only he had not been so gay and had, instead, just checked into a hotel room, donned a diaper, and fucked a couple of hookers like a normal Republican. They are conservatives and thinking outside the box is just unacceptable.
yeahyourite.
John Edwards turns on his fellow Democrats
yeahyourite. Clinton is truly becoming BushLite and Obama stands for nothing. It's high time Edwards takes it to them. The Dem establishment has a goddess-awful track record, 2006 notwithstanding. Taking the campaign past DC Dems to the people makes good strategy for Edwards:
Behind the scenes, Edwards' advisors continued to highlight the differences in the Democratic field. Trippi claimed the other presidential campaigns opposed banning lobbyist contributions because they did not want to upset Democratic leaders like New York Sen. Charles Schumer, who is in charge of fundraising for the party's Senate candidates, a task that depends heavily on lobbyist contributions. "We are talking about really ticking off some of the Democratic Party establishment," Trippi said. "The tougher step is to say if it's good enough me and it's good enough for Barack Obama, [why] isn't it good enough for the Democratic Party?" Trippi said he believed Obama was not working to ban all lobbyist money because "he has to walk into the Senate cloakroom."
This is why sitting senators are sitting ducks. Both of the sitting senators are playing not to lose.
Democrats want and need a candidate who wants to win.
At the memorial attended by the disrespectful piece of shit who lives in the White House, he asked for a moment of silence. At the memorial attended by His Honor the Mayor, they rang a bell.
Bush wants the storm, its victims, and the city to just be silent when he's around. Kanye West was right.
Nagin and the rest of us want to ring bells and shout from rooftops.
Pushing a Ford Escort to 140 or videoing it and putting it on YouTube:
An unnamed 19-year-old has been arrested on suspicion of "having posted a video of himself on YouTube driving at speeds of more than 140 mph", Reuters reports.The alleged Ford Escort incident took place on the single-carriageway A76 in southwest Scotland. Sergeant Scott McLachlan, of Dumfries and Galloway police's Roads Policing Unit, described the stunt as "completely foolish behaviour".
He added: "Not only did he endanger his own life, but that of other road-users. It is unacceptable, and to post a recording of such driving on the internet is entirely stupid."
McLachlan noted that one third of fatal accidents involve drivers under 25, and observed: "Young men in particular seem to think they are invincible behind the wheel - but the facts tell a different story."
Look at that last note, though, about accidents with drivers under 25. That explains why Justin's insurance is so bloody expensive, to be sure.
Tuesday was worse than Monday in many ways, because we were forced to watch the horror of the levee breaches. The winds were gone, and there was still no real word on the condition of our house in Metairie. We'd see the occasional shot from a helicopter fly-over, but it was difficult to assess the extent of the damage. A good example of this was how I came about getting my current Jeep. A friend of mine saw footage from a helicopter of a point about six blocks from his Kenner home that was about 3'erwater. He figured that his Jeep CJ-7 was a goner, so he went out that Tuedsay in East Texas and bought a new truck. It turned out that it was my Jeep Cherokee that flooded and his Jeep was high and dry, so I bought it from him. The "fog of war" was huge at this point.
The water kept pouring into the city. The Industrial Canal breach, two holes in the floodwalls along the London Avenue Canal, and the 17th Street Canal. So much water that the regular post-hurricane relief procedures that were planned and rehearsed could not be put in place.
Whenever a storm hits Louisiana, the post-storm relief plan is basically simple. The governor puts the Louisiana National Guard on alert 72 hours or so before the storm's landfall. After the winds die down and the storm moves inland, NG units roll into the impact area with supplies and equipment. Other relief workers follow the Guard, such as power company workers, the Red Cross, etc. It's about the wind, remember. Once the wind dies down, relief should be able to enter an area.
We trusted the Corps of Engineers.
The problem with this storm was that there was no way for relief workers to get into the city. Not only was there too much water, but it was still coming in. Levee breaches that were miles away from downtown and mid-city were filling up those neighborhoods by Tuesday morning. Crews were working on plugging the holes, but it was a tough job. It wasn't made easier with idiots like David Vitter (R-Huggies), who claimed on Tuesday afternoon that the city really wasn't flooding.
This was a real problem for the folks who were sitll downtown at the Superdome.
Before I talk about the Superdome, let's make something clear at the outset. Using the Superdome as a "shelter of last resort" made perfect sense. The city's evacuation plan has always been for anyone who had the means to leave on their own (in other words, they have a car) should leave. Those who didn't have their own transportation would gather at Da Dome and ride a storm out there. The stadium was stocked with 36 hours' worth of supplies. The idea was always to use Da Dome as a shelter against wind. Once the wind dies down, people go home.
But there was no going home for many people. Home was underwater, and the water was still rising.
The other big problem at this point was that there wasn't anybody to lead the relief effort. NOPD was in disarray at this point. The 256 Mechanized Infantry Brigade was still in Iraq. That was the equipment that we really needed, trucks with big wheels to drive through water, HWMMVs with vertical exhaust pipes, portable generators, construction equipment.
Not only was all that equipment in Iraq, but it wasn't going to come home in any case. The Pentagon had planned to send the 256th home, but their equipment would stay in Iraq.
Real help from the National Guard wouldn't come for days, when units from the Pennsylvania and Wisconson National Guards came down. While the Louisiana National Guard occupied Bagdhad, Fidel Castro was offering to help New Orleans.
The 30K+ people in or near Da Dome had to be evacuated. There was no place for them to go, and no way to get buses in to take them out. Da Dome was a wreck by now, its roof ripped open in one spot. It was rapidly becoming a serious biohazard as human waste and garbage piled up.
And the water was rising.
Leaders of the relief effort made the decision to move people from Da Dome to the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center.
Something needs to be said about the Convention Center at this point. This facility was always off the radar in terms of hurricane planning. That's because it's the mainstay of the city's convention business. Most hurricane plans address sheltering evacuees for 24-36 hours maximum. The Superdome can handle that. There are other stadiums in the area, and there's usually no big events in Da Dome in the summer anyway. It's always expected that the Convention Center would be hosting whatever its next event is within a few days of a storm's passing.
This is why DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff had no idea that people were moving to and were located at the Convention Center. The facility just wasn't on the plan on his desk. Clearly the only information that Chertoff had at this point was the pre-storm paperwork. No big surprise here, since he's just a Guilianai/Bush hack. So, instead of getting briefed on what was going on, he read from the script.
The Convention Center was just a dark, cavenerous building on Tuesday the 30th. It wasn't set up for relief efforts. There were no supplies. The 225th Engineering Batallion of the LANG had arrived with minimal supplies and not much equipment. The equipment was a bit out of position at this point.
It was in Iraq.
The bulk of relief supplies couldn't be brought in by regular 18-wheeler truck, and there was discussion about whether or not to bring in relief supplies at all, since it was clear that those people could not stay anyway.
The facitlity had to be used, however, because Da Dome was just a mess by now. The plans had been thrown out the window at this point.
Sitting in Shreveport, glued to my computer, most of my information at this point was coming from the Internets. Bloggers were still reporting from downtown on LiveJournal, and Da Paper still was posting sporadic bursts of news on their website.
By nightfall, Ray Nagin's civilized veneer had been totally peeled away by the fighting that was taking place between state and federal officials. The London Avenue Canal breaches had been plugged, but attempts to stop the flow of water at the 17th Street Canal had failed. Fingers were pointing as to why helicopter support for the repair effort at that location arrived late and was of minimal impact.
The water was still flowing into the city, despite Vitty-cent's irrational statements.
There was still not much news on the status of Metairie. We didn't know if my sister-in-law and her family, who decided to stay in their Old Metairie home, were OK. Helicopters flying over the 17th Street Canal breach would occasionally head west and send back some photos. There was water in the parking lot of Clearview Mall, which is only blocks from our house, but it was difficult to tell just how much.
My wife's eight-year old Chevy Lumina bit the dust on Tuesday. We took it to the shop in Shreveport that our friends use regularly, and they told us that it would cost $1500 to fix the transmission. That would be spending good money after bad, so we decided we'd go out the next day and buy a new car. We actually discussed this on the drive up to Shreveport on Sunday, since our cars were getting up there in age, and having two cars over seven years old was a bad idea.
My anger now had a distraction, but the water kept rising.
After he was arrested, Craig, who is married, was taken to the Airport Police Operations Center to be interviewed about the lewd conduct incident, according to the police report. At one point during the interview, Craig handed the plainclothes sergeant who arrested him a business card that identified him as a U.S. Senator and said, “What do you think about that?” the report states.That's the reaction of a man who sees himself as above the law. He's about getting his cock sucked, not man-lurve. The old bastard wanted to get off and get a thrill, but he wanted it anonymously, and with the spice of a bit of danger involved. No visits to a brothel, no callgirls to expose him later, this was just quickie sex. Because he could. It also could explain his virulent anti-gay positions in the Senate, that he held gay men in contempt, because they were so easy for him to use for to appease his sexual appetite.
KENNER, La. -- Longtime Kenner police Capt. James Gallagher died Tuesday night, Chief Steve Caraway said. Gallagher was found unresponsive in Lafreniere Park, where he was jogging. He suffered an apparent heart attack, according to Caraway. Gallagher served for 37 years. He had retired but later returned as the department's public information officer. Copyright 2007 by WDSU.comI used to have a friend who worked with Captain Gallagher at KPD. He was widely respected both within the department and the community.
SABATO: Let's say it's Michael Chertoff. Undoubtedly, the Democrats are going to revisit Katrina. They're going to use the nomination hearings for attorney general to talk about something that happened two years ago in a completely different realm, but that's politics.This on ABC's Good Morning America today. I wonder if the UVA alums who lived in Lakeview and still aren't back in their homes think it's all "politics." We don't "re-visit" the storm, you asshole. We live it daily. And were it up to Chertoff and his boss, the disrespectful piece of shit who lives in the white house, they would never "re-visit" it. Professor Sabato, the problem is that YOU live in a completely different realm. It's called Candy Land.
Very compelling video of John and Elizabeth on the stump in Portsmouth, NH (home of the Press Room, a neat jazz pub, btw):
It's going to be a shame when the Secret Service won't let EE run and give people in the crowd hugs anymore when John gets the nomination. Understandable, of course, but still...
Question from the clip that should indeed be asked of every candidate, Republican and Democrat:
"How many people in
EE is right, if the answer is NOT zero, you need to get yourself another candidate!
and if someone is in the LJ community, conservative, please post it there. I'm banned from posting there. :-)
The Book of Revelation is not a foreign policy manual.
it's the tagline of a commentor in my DailyKos diary...and so true!
Japan's not a country that you think of when you think of homelessness and unemployment, but the problem is nonetheless there:
Japan's health and welfare ministry says it has identified 5,400 "Net cafe refugees" - a new underclass driven by hard times to doss down in 24-hour cybercafes, the Telegraph reports.These unfortunates are the fall-out from Japan's economic slump following the 1980s boom years. Despute the current rise in Japan's fortunes, there are "still not enough jobs to go around, meaning a rising homeless population and thousands who lead a hand-to-mouth existence".
What's scary is that the situation is expected to get worse there before it gets better. Let's face it, the US isn't the only country being hit by outsourcing.
It was an odd feeling to wake up in somoene else's house on the morning that a storm was to hit at home. Maybe it's because I've ridden out so many of the things in my life, but the things never bothered me. The biggest fear I ever had when a hurricane hit was that they spawn tornados, and a tornado is something you really can't defend against in New Orleans--we don't have basements or storm cellars. Still, that was a relatively small risk, and the benefits of being in your home when the wnds kicked up were a lot. If a window breaks, you can patch it up quick, rather than having a bunch of rain come in. If debris from someone else's house starts blowing around, there are always brief points of (relative) calm where you can get out and make quick repairs if necessary.
Still, I didn't regret bailing out for Shreveport the day before the world changed. After all, it was better for the wife and the boys. They didn't share my perverse fascination with hurricanes. I didn't sleep all that much the night of the 28th, as I watched the track of the storm on the laptop throughout the night. The storm was turning a bit more eastward, but not enough to make me relax. When Camille hit Mississippi in 1967, it was much further to the east, so that all we got in the city was tropical storm winds. In fact, our block in Metairie was one of the few that even lost power, because the neighbor had one of those huge amateur radio antennas that fell over and took out the power lines. This storm was coming right up the bad-news alley, where the winds might push the water over the levee.
It was all about the wind, you see. Did the Corps build the levees high enough? There were early reports that storm surge was creeping up on the levees along the Industrial Canal and the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO) in the eastern part of town. Nothing really coming in from the west, where we lived. No news is good news.
Coffee was a good kickstart. It was difficult to determine what was happening back home, even with access to the internets. A hurricane is one of those situations that fits von Clausewitz' "fog of war" perfectly. Reports come in disjointed and sporadic. Power invariably goes out and TV stations go off the air. Radio stations, particularly WWL, are able to stay on, since their power requirements can be met with generators. It's all unclear and confused, as one would expect. When you're 350 miles away, it's even more difficult to get a handle on the situation.
By the time the rest of the family woke up, the world had started to change. St. Bernard Parish was gone, literally underwater. "Da Nint," the city's Ninth Ward, was filling up like a bucket. Storm surge and levee breaches teamed up to put 6' into the part of the Ninth Ward east of the Industrial Canal, and it wasn't even lunchtime.
Not a good situation. Still, I thought, if this is as bad as it gets, we'll be OK as a city. We've been through this before, and other parts of the city will always pitch in to help repair the damage. Chalmatians in St. Bernard are tough folks, they pull through.
Then the world started ending. The 17th Street Canal floodwall broke before lunchtime.
It's hard for outsiders to understand just how devastating this particular breach was to the city, because so much focus is placed on the Ninth Ward. The 17th Street Canal is a drainage canal. It runs along the parish line that divides Orleans from Jefferson Parish. We have a number of these north-south canals throughout the area. When it rains, catch basins in the streets drain them. Pipes carry the water to the canals. When the canals get high, massive pumps push that water out into the lake. It's how we live below sea level. The 17th Street Canal has a 10' levee on either side. Set into that levee is a 10' high floodwall. It's all about the wind, you see. If the wind were to push the water from the lake down onto the city, those levees and floodwalls were there to minimize the amount of water that would get into the neighborhood. The Corps of Engineers always had confidence that only "the big one" would top those floodwalls. We believed the Corps.
Nobody ever believed that the floodwall would simply fall apart.
And that's what happened to a section of the floodwall located about 300 yards from the lake. There's an empty lot now on Bellaire Drive, the street right next the eastern floodwall of the canal. On August 28, 2005, two homes stood there. By dusk on the 29th, those two homes were literally washed away. Lake Pontchartrain began pouring into the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans, filling that area with as much as 12' of water in some areas.
When we got the news that the 17th Street Canal had been breached, my first question was "which side?" If the western side held, our house would be OK. There were two other drainage canals between that one and our house. When the word came that it was the New Orleans side of the canal that breached, we breathed a bit of a sigh of relief while still stunned that so much was being lost.
But that wasn't all. The London Avenue Canal in Gentilly also breached, pouring another ten feet of water into that neighborhood. St. Frances Xavier Cabrini Church, where we got married 25 years ago, was filled with water. Redeemer-Seton High School, just down the street from the church, was flooded to the second floor.
The devastation of the Ninth Ward was absolutely nothing when compared to the loss of Lakeview and Gentilly. The Ninth Ward gets the publicity and attention because the disrespectful piece of shit who lives in the White House put his political pit bull in charge of Gulf Coast recovery so he could make sure the Eebil Coloreds didn't come back to the city, guaranteeing that Louisiana would become a red state for decades to come. But the economic impact of losing the residents of Da Nint was nothing compared to Lakeview and Gentilly. Those neighborhoods are three times the size of the Ninth Ward.
Those neighborhoods were also my home in many ways for most of my life. I grew up in Metairie, but I went to school in Gentilly from 8th grade through university, attending Brother Martin High School for 8-12, then the University of New Orleans for four years. When I got my BA, i landed a job at Redeemer High School in Gentilly, teaching American History. We moved just off of Elysian Fields Avenue when we got married. In high school, I would often take public transit home-the Cartier line to the Lake Vista line to the LakeShore line, running through Gentilly and Lakeview, stopping at friends' houses occasionally to hang out. My dad worked at UNO for over 30 years. My fraternity, Lambda Chi Alpha, had a fantastic house on Elysian Fields Avenue, just offf campus. We played pool at the Golden Cue, ate pizza at Slicky's, partied on the Saturday before Mardi Gras with the Krewe of Dreux at their big block party. My first year teaching high school included helping kids from Uptown and the Irish Channel get adjusted to the new Gentilly location of their school.
When we got word about the 17th Street Canal, I was stunned. When we learned of the London Avenue Canal breach, I cried. So much of my life was now underwater. My son's school (he had just begun his senior year at Brother Martin) was suddenly in turmoil. We didn't know much about the condition of our home in Metairie, though--all the focus was on that hole in the 17th Street Canal floodwall. (I'll write about Metairie tomorrow.)
It didn't make sense. This wasn't supposed to happen. The water might come over the tops of the levees, but the levees and floodwaslls weren't supposed to break
We trusted the Corps of Engineers.
I got drunk that evening.
The space shuttle Discovery will carry the historic movie prop to the International Space Station and back in October in honor of the 30th anniversary of the release of George Lucas' blockbuster "Star Wars."NASA does some fine work with unmanned satellites and probes, but the manned program needs to be torn down and re-built from scratch.
While many people believe that our next President will be a Democrat, the process still has to play out. That means someone has to win the nomination of the Democratic party. For all that pundits and writers are discussing who will win a general election, somebody's got to win state primaries, caucuses and conventions. They've got to put delegates into seats for next year's party convention in Denver.
It's for that reason I find articles like Alex Koppelman's interview of Drew Westen in Salon yesterday curious. Westen is the author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation." According to Koppelman, "Westen thinks the Democrats need to rely less on logic and more on emotion, and they need to understand that strength is less a function of defense policy than of backbone."
OK, I'll buy that, and I might just buy the book, but the first question of the interview has me scratching my head:
What have you thought about the message that the candidates have been sending during the campaign so far?If we focus on the people who are realistically most in this race, the three who have the best shot at this point, who I think are Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards ... they're all looking at how the voters who decide elections are the voters in the middle. The way Clinton and Obama are trying to do it is with centrist messages ... Obama is trying to capture the center by saying, "Why can't we all get along?"
Edwards is taking a different tack ... an alternative way of trying to reach the center. The center right now is actually pretty down on the [GOP], and independents right now don't like the Republicans and they don't like the war ... What Edwards is doing much more is saying: "These aren't people who you compromise with ... I'm not going to compromise with the people who've given you the Iraq war, and I'm not going to compromise with the people who don't want you to get healthcare because it's not in their interest, and I'm not going to compromise with the people who are ripping you off at the gas tank."
Westen makes an assumption that is way off base here. He's assuming that Edwards is reaching for voters in the center of the electorate by talking up populist themes. For someone who considers themselves knowledgable on our electoral process, it seems like he's missing the point of the current campaign efforts of all the Dem candidates. Put simply, they need to get nominated.
The way to win primaries is to have a message that primary voters want to hear. Those voters are not necessarily the center that Westen talks about. They're the hard-core caucus-goers, the political insiders and central committee members who attend state conventions. They're the voters who will go to the polls to vote on Super Tuesday and other primary dates.
That's why we still hear the entire Republican field of candidates talking like madmen--they need to convince their party's base to vote for them. It's no different for the Democrats. What we see here is a total difference in style between the sitting senators and the former senator. Clinton and Obama are not playing to win, they're playing to "not lose." Anybody who is a futbol fan understands this--think Brazil vs. Italy in the World Cup final in 1994. Nobody takes an aggressive position that can put you out on the edge and get you in trouble.
Edwards, on the other hand, is going for the base. He's the white trial lawyer, so he can't assume people will come out to vote for him in droves because he's black or because he's a woman. He's trying to get the party faithful to come out for him because he's talking about the things they want to hear about. When you're behind in the game, you have to play aggressive to win.
That's the kind of candidate I want running against the Republicans. I've had enough of play-it-safe Democrats. Obama's campaign reminds me of Mary Landrieu's from 2002, and Clinton sounds more like a moderate Republican than a Democrat.
Two years ago yesterday, I was sitting in front of the boobtoob with the laptop on the coffee table, considering whether or not we were going to leave our home in the face of Hurricane Katrina. The storm tracks weren't looking good. My instincts were that the storm was going to turn eastward, but would it turn enough to allay my wife's concerns about staying?
On August 27, 2005, the concern was not water, but wind. While many areas of the east bank of Jefferson Parish had flooded because of heavy rains, our Metairie home had never, ever flooded. There were times when the water came up over the sidewalk onto the lawn, but that was it. Street flooding that ruined carpets and floors in Metairie in the past had cost politicians their jobs as pump upgrades and other drainage issues went front and center in the 1990s. By 2000, flooding wasn't on our minds like it used to be. But wind is always a huge concern, wind that would damage the roof, uproot trees, or throw debris through windows.
Then there was the traffic. By Saturday afternoon, voluntary evacuation orders had been given for Orleans, Jefferson and St. Bernard Parishes. The roads were already jammed with cars moving less than five miles an hour. Neither my wife nor I had ever evacuated because of a hurricane in our lives, and the inconvenience was definitely outweighing the peace of mind factors. We decided to watch the storm through Saturday night and make a decision early Sunday morning. We hoped the traffic would settle down overnight as well.
By Sunday morning, the storm had reached Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale. It was the wind that made us leave. We packed up the car and headed across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway to I-12W to I-55N to I-20W, finally arriving on the doorstep of friends in Shreveport eight hours later. We were tired and stressed, and our friends immediately whisked us out to dinner and drinks. We all figured that we would be imposing on them no more than a day or two, then we'd drive back and (hopefully) no trees would have blown into the house. Because the concern was the wind.
Yes, the threat of wind, not water. That's because so many of us in the New Orleahs area trusted the work of the US Army Corps of Engineers. In 1965, Hurricane Betsy flooded the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, prompting state, local, and federal governments to work with the Corps to raise levees from 10-15 feet to 25-30 feet. Those of us in our forties had seen the expansion of flood protection around the area all our lives. Levees, floodgates, floodwalls, improved/revised evacuation plans, communications coordination, all contributed to making us feel like we were on the right track in terms of defending our homes against the storms.
What none of us expected was that the US Army Corps of Engineers had botched the job. Not everyone agreed with everything the Corps did, but, when it came to flood control, most folks trusted their work. One good reason for this was the success of projects like the Old River Control Structure, which regulates the flow of the Mississippi River, to keep the river from changing course and completely merging with the Atchaflaya River. Old River has been operational since 1963, keeping the Port of New Orleans economically viable. Then there's the Bonnet Carre' Spillway. Built by the Corps in the 1930s as a response to the great flood of 1927, the spillway is designed to divert the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain via a floodway connecting the two twelve miles upriver from the city. The spillway has been opened several times since its construction, protecting the city from high water from the River. Projects created by the Corps worked. Sure, people had issues with rights-of-way near levees, designations of areas as "wetlands," and Environmental Impact Statements that some viewed as bureaucratic nightmares, but the big-picture projects worked. We trusted the Corps.
We totally trusted the Corps on Sunday, August 28, 2005. Sitting on our friends' deck, drinking wine and talking, the worry was that the wind would push the water over the levees. As with all of these storms, the hope was that it would turn east or west from the city just enough that the counter-clockwise winds would not push Lake Pontchartrain on top of the levees along the north of the metro area. The "strike probability" of the storm hitting the city increased Sunday morning, but by that evening, it looked like this storm was turning enough that our suburban Metairie home would be safe. We went to bed.
(continued tomorrow)
It's no surprise that La Grace doesn't get it, of course, but it's important to point out that the Democratic attacks on Bobby Jindal's religious beliefs may be very effective. Just how effective they are won't be seen until election day, however.
Just look at Grace's payoff pitch:
Not that many people are likely to see the ad. But if Jindal has his way, many more will hear him say that he's being attacked for his Christian faith. If that's misleading too -- and it is, since the Democratic ad doesn't question Jindal's faith per se, just his attitude towards those who don't share it -- who cares? Jindal still gets to remind voters that, Indian heritage, Hindu upbringing and Ivy League education notwithstanding, he's just a regular church-going Louisiana guy.
Jindal gets to remind voters that he's dark-skinned and started out life as a Hindu. Yeah, that's going to go over real big in a state that almost elected David Duke governor. And just like when Dukey-boy ran, you're not going to hear a lot of people say that racial prejudice will be a major factor in their choice.
It's an odd form of political jujitsu, Democrats turning the Republican Party's racists against them. In this era of take-no-prisoners campaigning, I'm glad to see Democrats getting dirty.
Bruce Alpert does a good analysis of the impact of political corruption on the relationship between Louisiana and the feds. He points out that the tribulations of Dollar Bill Jefferson and the guilty plea of Councilman Olver Thomas have taken a toll on the state's reputation.
So, let's all take a moment and thank Senator David Vitter (R-Canal Street) for being such a pervert. While the New Orleans Democrats who are caught up in scandal are simply crooks, Vitter is Holden Caufield of the first magnitude. Any attempt to paint New Orleans as a hotbed of corruption will invariably bring up the fact that Vitty-cent likes hookers to dress him up in diapers.
Say what you want about greed, graft, theft, and corruption. Yes, they're rampant. Yes, it's only going to get worse in New Orleans, since Oliver Thomas' plea deal means the noose around former mayor Markey-Marc is tightening. Thing is, this sort of corruption is relatively acceptable. People across the nation are used to crooked pols.
They're not used to perverts, however, and perverts who are hypocrites to the extent that Vitty-cent don't come along every day. That's why we owe such a debt to Vitty-cent. The actions of Democrats in New Orleans leave the city and the party wide open to attack from the next generation of Rove-ian consultants who are pressing for one-party rule. The power of any blasts they make is severely reduced because they really don't want people remembering that one of their US Senators likes diapers.
I've heard some post-storm stories that rip me up, but this morning's "StoryCorps" segment on NPR's Morning Edition really got to me:
More than two years after Katrina, moving past the tragedy is still understandably difficult for some New Orleans residents.Stafford, Texas, became the new post-Katrina home for 60-year-old Antoinette Franklin and her 23-year-old niece, Iriel Franklin. But memories of their hometown, New Orleans, remains vivid.
I don't blame Ms. Franklin, I felt the same way about Planet Hooston. Two weeks there for me were two weeks too many.
But when she talked about keeping it together, I related totally:
"You know, I'd love to have a nervous breakdown myself, but everyone has taken their turn before me, so I won't be able to for quite a while," she says. "I'm hoping that we'll be able to go home."
There was no time for me to lose it in the first six months. Wife went immediately to Chicago for her work, and that left me with the house and the boys. My local training/consulting practice went down the drain with the Broussard water that flooded my home. Still, Justin had to get to Brother Martin in Baton Rouge, the house had to be gutted and rebuilt. No time for reflection.
Now that I'm going to be home for a few months, It's starting to hit me again, but now there's so much more anger in my emotions. Anger that politicians like Aaron Broussard think they should be re-elected in spite of their terrible job performance in the last two years. Anger with the disrespectful piece of crap who lives in the White House for abandoning my town. Anger with state and local officials whose bickering slows down the process.
And yes, anger with people like the Franklins, who are off in Houston, and whine about wanting to come home. I'll grant that this is selfish on my part to be angry with these folks, but it's there. They haven't been through the stress of re-building their homes. They're 500 miles away from here, living in a nice neighborhood and getting on with their lives. They don't drive through the still-struggling neighborhood of Lakeview and the all-but-deserted Gentilly area daily. Perhaps if they were here, working on bringing the city back, I wouldn't feel like they should just shut up.
Of course, when I settle down, I realize that this is just my depression lashing out. Most families like the Franklins can't come back. They can't because they literally lost everything, and the obstacles in their way right now are formidable. Insurance companies, bickering bureaucrats and a slow job market for professionals make things tough.
This is wound that isn't going to go away for a long, long time.
A replay of this match just ended on GolTV. Not terribly exciting, but it was the commentary that kept me interested. Two Latin gentlemen were calling the match, and their bilingual skills made me so jealous. They were thinking in Spanish (one yells "ay yi yi!" when the home side missed a great scoring opportunity, but they're speaking in perfect English. Better than a West Banker, we used to say. :-)
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USA played a good match today against a very quick Swedish national side. The match was FAST--the US has become a quick-restart side, and the caught the Swedes off-guard a number of times. Still, the rocket that Kallstrom shot into the net was just evil. There was NO way Tim Howard could stop that shot.
Overall, both sides got what they wanted out of this match. Sweden is looking to warm up for Euro, USA is looking to bring along younger players to gear up for WC2010.
One interesting note about the US side was how many players that started were already in Europe, playing for UEFA clubs:
Tim Howard - Everton FC
Steve Cherundolo - Hannover 96
Oguchi Onyewu - Standard de Liege
Carlos Bocanegra - Fulham FC
Jay Demerit - Watford FC
Jonathan Spector - West Ham United
Benny Feilhaber - Hamburger SV
Michael Bradley - SC Heerenveen
Bobby Convey - Reading FC
DaMarcus Beasley - Manchester City
Sal Zizzo - Hannover 96 (subbed in for Beasley)
Kamani Hill - Vfl Woflsburg
Clint Dempsey - Fulham
Charlie Davies - Hammarby IF
Marcus Hahnemann - Reading FC (backup GK for Howard, did not play)
So, that's eight playing in England, four in Germany, one in Belgium, one in Sweden, and one in Holland. I can remember when the only member of the US side playing in Europe was Kasey Keller.
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In this NPR segment, they tell the joke "fusion is the energy solution of the future...and always will be..." There's a group of researchers in France really working on fusion, though, and even though they joke too, they're serious.
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Excellent piece this morning from NPR on Orleans Parish Prison. OPP has been a shithole for decades. I'm a bit surprised that Gusman didn't grant an interview, though:
Sheriff Marlin Gusman, who runs the prison, also refused NPR's request for an interview and tour of the facility, even after hearing detailed descriptions of the allegations.
Given how bad the place has been for so long, compound that with the aftermath of the storm, and I would think Gusman would want to speak out and point fingers. After all, OPP is yet another example of systemic racism in Orleans Parish. White people don't go to OPP unless they commit capital murder. They get bail. Shoot, even Mexicans don't go to OPP, because immigration violations put you in the federal system. OPP is really just an extension of the Orleans Parish Public School System in all too many unfortunate ways.
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...USL match, first half. What is it with American footie announcers? They feel the need to play-by-play everything as if it's the NFL. British and Latino announcers are more willing to let the play speak for themselves, commenting on the "color" of the match.
I've switched to Bundesliga, Karlsruhe 1-0 Hannover...Karlsruhe is up from Division 2 of the Bundesliga for the first time in years, and Hannover is a very weak top-level team...very physical match!
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"Hurricane Dean" - the true track :-)
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...and it's forcing them to re-think their business strategy:
Diebold has re-branded its electronic voting subsidiary as "Premier Election Solutions" after attempts to offload the business failed. The firm also had to rein in its performance predictions, as uncertainty about the security of the machines starts to bite.The firm said: "Efforts to sell this company... have proven unsuccessful due in part to the rapidly evolving political uncertainties and controversies surrounding state and jurisdiction purchases of electronic voting systems".
It also noted that large orders it was expecting in 2007 have moved into "2008 and beyond", and so needs to reduce its full year revenue forecast by around $120m. That is more than half: the business had expected to report revenue of up to $215m for the period.
While the idea of controlling the voting machines was attractive to disciples of Karl Rove, I suspect that more rational Republicans across the country realized that rigged voting machines would end up in the hands of the opposition at some point. It's something we learned a long time ago here in Louisiana. For all the corruption and insanity in our political system, our voting machines have been clean as a whistle. Both sides (and that was Long vs anti-Long, they were all Democrats) knew that they'd be screwed if they tried something with actual election results.
But without the inside game, look for Republicans to resume the traditional end-runs of traditional voter suppression tactics.
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El Reg as usual brings me a morning chuckle:
However, they say it's always darkest just before the dawn, and the stygian gloom was suddenly pierced by an enlightening email from UK sex toy outfit LoveHoney announcing "the world's first ever sex toy recycling scheme":
Marvellous. Here's the background:
LoveHoney is extending environmental awareness to the bedroom by encouraging people to send in their overloved rabbit vibrators so that they can be recycled and treated in an ecologically sound manner, rather than being dumped in landfill sites. For each rabbit received through the scheme, LoveHoney is donating £1 to the World Land Trust and offering customers the opportunity to buy a clean, green rabbit for half price.
Environmental consciousness knows no bounds!
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...on NPR this morning. A guy's developed a scanner that allows you to see who has been editing Wikipedia entries, showing that corporations like Diebold and Exxon/Mobil have been scrubbing their entries. It cuts both ways, though, as someone has added uncomplimentary adjectives about the Vulgar Pigboy into his entry as well. Go listen, it's good.
I've said this before, I firmly believe that Scouting's postitives outweigh the negatives. Now, that's a big deal for many, considering that national organization is controlled by bible-thumping, homophobic nuts. Still, the good outweighs the nuts, for my money. It's good to see something like this reinforce my belief:
When Kinlichiinii John set out to earn a religious emblem for his uniform like other Cub Scouts, he learned that none exists to acknowledge his Navajo beliefs.
Neither the traditional Navajo spiritual way of life nor the Native American Church are among the 35 religious affiliations represented in emblems approved by the Boy Scouts of America.
So 9-year-old Kinlichiinii, with the help of his family, Navajo medicine men and others, has embarked on a quest to establish Scouting's first American Indian religious emblem.
Hopefully the thumpers will allow this to go through.
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I figured that when the feds ensnared Stan "Pampy" Barre that they'd get Markey-Marc. I never figured they'd get Oliver Thomas as well:
In the most dramatic development to date in a sprawling probe of corruption in New Orleans city government, longtime City Councilman and mayoral hopeful Oliver Thomas has reached an agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to charges of demanding illegal payments from a City Hall vendor and is expected to resign his at-large council seat as early as Monday, sources familiar with the case said Saturday.
...
The case against Thomas grew out of conversations between federal prosecutors and restaurateur Stan "Pampy" Barre, who pleaded guilty in January to participating in a separate scheme to skim more than $1 million from a massive energy-savings contract that former Mayor Marc Morial signed in the waning days of his administration, the sources said.
I've always said that Pampy wasn't going to jail for Markey-Marc. He's just too old to want to die in prison. But if he can get even less time in Club Fed by giving up Thomas, what the heck.
(Full disclosure: as a very frequent flier out of MSY, I've been subjected to the awful food that Barre serves at his places at Louis Armstrong International Airport. He got those contracts because of his relationship with Markey-Marc, so for my money, he should rot in prison.)
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Foti continues to press for the release of records in the Memorial Hospital investigation. The big question is, why? Is it that he's convinced of Dr. Pou's guilt, or is this an attack on Eddie Jordan:
Though Foti has criticized New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan's handling of the case -- saying local prosecutors failed to present key evidence of guilt to the jury -- a Foti spokeswoman said the usual effort to unseal the records merely seeks to comply with the public records law. At the same time, spokeswoman Kris Wartelle questioned the motives of attorneys for Pou, the nurses and Tenet.
Ms. Wartelle better duck while throwing stones from that glass house. Yes, Dr. Pou and the nurses have ulterior motives, as does Tenet. They're all going to get the crap sued out of them in civil court. Releasing more documents will just embolden plaintiff attorneys.
Foti and the LA AG's office lost. They should do what pros do, go take a shower and prepare for the next game.
...but I can see where some might see six black guys bowing down to massa. Gizmodo says it best:
One of Intel's latest ad's shows six athletic black dudes bowing down before a dorky white guy in khaki pants. Lousy, barely subliminal racist advertising or just plain lousy advertising? You be the judge.
I see what Intel was trying for, though. I mean, if you're advertising a fast product, you wouldn't use six white guys here.
i've never had bridge phobia, but this and some weed might give it to me:
The entire span of a four-lane interstate bridge over the Mississippi River collapsed during evening rush hour Wednesday, sending vehicles, tons of concrete and twisted metal crashing into the water.
just...holy crap...
When I get past the holy crap stage, I'll start thinking about how this happens in other places, but it takes hurricanes to blow down our bridges at home. The Bay Bridge, the Big Dig in Baastin, now MSP. For all the outrageous corrpution we supposedly have in Louisiana, our bloody bridges don't fall into the bloody river...
While noting John Edwards' so-far very successful use of Teh Internets, Jeralyn says:
yes. Yes. YES. Yes Indeedy. This is very much a three-way race. The media plays it as Clinton-Obama because the woman-vs-black dynamic is sexier to libruls and inflames wingnuts more. Edwards is just another WASP male lawyer who was a Senator. His wife riles up more people than he does, but the campaign is careful not to flog that too much. While the Clinton and Obama camps play to the media and the "middle," Edwards plays to the base. Joe Trippi, one of Edwards' senior advisors, ran Howard Dean's Netroots effort. It's the base that will vote in Iowa and NH. The netroots tune out the MSM and tun into what's happening on the ground.
I think it's the right way to go for Edwards. I read all his campaign e-mails and really appreciate the way he's moved left of center since the Kerry campaign.
Why this race isn't between Hillary and Edwards as opposed to Hillary and Obama has me stumped. I think Obama needs a lot more seasoning and experience before becoming presidential material.
Which leads me to conclude it's still a three-way race and Edwards is very much in it.
[via TalkLeft]
