From what I hear Blanco did not want to hand control over to the Fed's since "that would be, like, martial law".

Punnier still, a better name for the unused school buses has already been floated:

Nagin's Navy.

Let's start an impeach Blanco movement!
Hell, everytime Ted "Snorkel" Kennedy farts they try to impeach W.

Does LA have an impeachment provision?

Warthog:

Naah, the "Motor Pool" one has the pun thing going for it.

Speaking of Teddy K, anyone making bets on how long he can hold out before publicly accusing Bush of leaving New Orleans to drown?

It would be his first such ill-conceived utterance.

The quote of the day is from uber-progressive/liberal Bob Somerby at The Daily Howler:

But alas! We learned a sad fact from Katrina last week. Despite all the excited talk about the way we’re "reality based," our liberal elites are increasingly vacuous--empty, stupid, dim and shrill, committed to loud, self-satisfied ranting and too inept--too self-involved--to traffic in trivial things like facts. What are the facts about last week’s reaction? Was FEMA’s reaction historically slow? We would guess that review of these facts would tend to promote progressive interests. But we’ve yet to see any real attempt to review past federal reaction to storms. Loud-mouthed liberals are calling folk names, something we simply love to do (it feels very good). But the facts are hard to find, about this and many other topics.

But then, all across the landscape last week, we saw the dank waters of freeper creep invading the once-pristine liberal web. Progressives and liberals name-called freely and bungled facts--helping to doom progressive interests. We can be just as dumb as they have long been, our excited liberal leaders seemed to cry. Why have progressive interests foundered? Why do the poor just keep getting poorer? We thought we got a good idea as we saw these dank waters spread left.

Oops, here's the link.

Breaking: Al-Reuters (12:41 pm) sez "Democrats so far have been slow to criticize" Bush's handling of Katrina! WTF?

you know, for a guy who just loves to tell everybody how goddam smart he is, and how stupid his liberal pals are for repeating dumb talking points, you'd think he would try to avoid repeating things like "while Bush lounged on vacation in Crawford".

Somersby I meant.

Al-Reuters update: This seems like a good set-up for a Scrappleface-type piece: "Top officals of the MSM today slammed Democratic party leaders for their slow response to the administration's mishandling of hurricane Katrina. Said one high-ranking journalist, 'This is a pathetic case of too little too late. Party leaders have known for many days that Katrina would eventually hit land somewhere, and should have prepared dozens of slanderous and racially-inflammatory press releases well in advance of the event. Instead, the PR response has largely been left to lower-level officials such as Sharpton, Jackson, Penn, and [insert other notorious moonbats].' Other critics have noted that the resulting PR response has been inept and, at times, incoherent, and may have done more harm than good . . ."

…as authorities braced for the horrors the receding water is certain to reveal. "It's going to be awful and it's going to wake the nation up again," the mayor warned.

Good Morning Mayor Incompetence.

Thanks…but I’m already on my third cup.

You know, I keep thinking of the weather girl at Fox, who kept saying "this is going to be bad, very bad." I remember her using the word "doom" at one point. I thought to myself, if I was where this storm was heading and listening to her, I would have been long gone. I thought that it couldn't possibly be as bad as all that if some people were staying.

Turns out the weather girl knew exactly what she was talking about.

Somebody has to say it:

After reading all these stories about cops deserting and looting, citizens shooting at rescue helicopters, and those two hundred unused buses, am I the only one who no longer gives a shit about New Orleans?

Andrew, I couldn't say, but I still give a shit about them. That brush doesn't carry enough paint to cover a half a million people, at least not to me it doesn't.

Sure, the inept preparation and execution is maddening. Heartbreaking really, and we haven't even begun to count the dead.

But it doesn't make me quit caring.

What exactly is the point of this? Bush recommended evacuation on the 28th and that is the day Nagin ordered the evacuation.

Is this supposed to prove that he really did a good job, recommending evacuation to a city about to be hit with a category 5 hurricane?

What the hell???

What the hell???

*Sigh*

You know, the trolls really aren't that interesting anymore.

Is this supposed to prove that he really did a good job, recommending evacuation to a city about to be hit with a category 5 hurricane?

It was the best advice given in this whole g*ddamn mess. Too bad the idiots didn't heed him.

Watching the developing 'political drama' makes me wonder when we'll see the first instances of Liberal Head-Splodey.

I hope soon.

First, it was the city had to be razed, never to exist again. Then it was it would take 8 months to drain it. Later, it was 80 days. Now, I hear 30 days. All good news. I just the Chicken Littles would have kept their mouths shut early on.

That was meant to read: I just wish the Chicken Littles would have kept their mouths shut early on.

I'll keep saying it: All these attacks on Bush are going to backfire on the left. It just makes them look petty and vindictive. Especially as more reports come out about the total incompetence of the LA. and N.O. governments. The images of the Nagin Memorial Motor Pool and the NOPD (ha No PD) looters is going to stand in stark contrast to the actions of the Military\Fed relief-rescue-response.

Anyone see Haley Barbour cry on National Television like a pussy?

Anyone see Haley Barbour cry on National Television like a pussy?

Only democrats are allowed to cry on TV and not be called pussy's.

Only democrats are allowed to cry on TV and not be called pussy's

Missed that memo. My bad.
What about twats ?

It was the best advice given in this whole g*ddamn mess. Too bad the idiots didn't heed him.

You are a dumb ass. The mandatory evacuation order was issued that very same day.

Who's the dumb ass? Nagin said they "should" evacuate, that's not the same as must evacuate, and it's certainly not any different from what's been said during previous hurricanes. Nagin still didn't follow the city's evacuation plan. That could be criminal negligence if they start having hearings over this clusterfuck.

Spin it any way you want, the results will be the same. Nagin and Blanco are going to get hammered when the dust finally settles.

You are a dumb ass. The mandatory evacuation order was issued that very same day.

He called for an evacuation, not an evacuation order.

That means he wanted the officials to actually do something, not just say 'you better get out.'

I've always liked nautical tales, and tales of exploration in remote, hostile lands - real and fanciful, because they can give you - in their splendid and sometimes dangerous isolation from the rest of mankind - a window into how the larger world works from how society functions in their microcosm.

Moby Dick would never have worked for what Melville intended if it was set in Liverpool and the quest was financing a railroad or finding a quartet of musicians, for example.

Outside fictional sea and exploration tales, there is the true tale of riveting battle against death, waged against a remorseless foe with no outside help. Sometimes lost - "The Perfect Storm", sometimes won - the Shackleton Expedition. Sometimes death is only partially cheated, but those dying to save others carry honor and respect forevermore.

"A Tale of Two Hurricanes" talks of the heroism onboard the SS Central America, crippled, sinking in a hurricane in 1857, contrasted with the New Orleans mobs. It's author, Rocco DiPippo, saw in the behavior of the ships crew and passengers the nature of America's growing greatness as a nation, and by implication in the creation of an amoral dependent class as shown in New Orleans - possibly it's future fall.

http://frontpagemag.com/Articles...le.asp? ID=19383

Even as the media and Democratic party liberals obsess that they think Katrina problems all boil down to a "failure to deliver needed government services".

Best Regards,

Chris Ford
Waterford, CT

Musing Postscript: Media pundits and ethnic spokespersons decide in 2006 investigate the SS Central America "Failure".

"It is clear that this loss was related to unrestricted whaling"
"Where was President Pierce? What did he know, when did he know it?"
"I call it SS Central Americagate"
"The shipping company is responsible. At first signs of a storm, they should have dumped the 3 Tons of Gold to buy more time, for the children's sake."
"Yes, it's all about the Gold".
"They would have had a better chance if uniformed police heroes were patrolling the ship, looking for hurricanes, and if they had federal experts onboard to monitor and correct inappropriate bailing techniques."
"I demand an investigation on rumors that oppressed minorities were expected to bail along with everyone else".
"The Royal Navy plotted to let the SS Central America sink. They have better weather forecasting than we did."
"The oppressed minorities onboard should have been allowed in the lifeboats first, not the women and children. And they should have, given this was a disaster, been allowed to take as much Gold as they needed to barter for survival."
"All future ships built should have been perfectly safe, or we shouldn't have sailed or steamed them. - That was what America failed to do at the time, and the result was another 150 years of maritime and aviation disasters. Including many little children and pets."
"I resent that women were assigned a secondary role in heroism. Yes, women didn't bail and they left first, but only because the sexist patriarchal system at the time prevented them from taking charge and saving the ship through their greater care-giving abilities."
"The ship was run by white men. It was bound to sink given the lack of diversity in the crew's makeup."

Did somebody take a dump in here?

Fox is reporting the SuperDome is structurally damaged and State Officials are saying it probably will have to be torn down.

(I smell a scheme to have the taxpayers in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Illinois have a brandy-new billion dollar SuperDomeII cost inflicted on them, vs. the "good people of New Orleans".)

digitalbrownshirt: Sure does smell like it.

pathetic.

use google for crying out loud look at the news stories for the 28th.

Nagin ordered an immediate evacuation. And wasn't because Bush said so, he had only called moments before the news conference.

When you say "ordered a mandatory evacuation," I assume, of course, that police were dispatched to load recalcitrant citizens on to free city transit and school buses which would ferry them to safety, correct?

If that's not what it means, I'm not quite sure what "ordered a mandatory evacuation means."

I'm pretty certain that our anonymous friend doesn't know either. Mandatory involves police going dood to door and "forcing" people to leave. The fact that there's still quite a few people left in the city indicates that it was not "mandatory".

Keep spinning, maybe you'll believe your own hype.

you tell me genius. do you have some examples of properly executed mandatory evacuations you would like to hold up as a model?

Hey, no-name here doesn't seem to know the meaning of "mandatory." Yeah, brave guy, it means the police go door to door, telling everyone to get the hell out. You want an example of a mandatory evacuation that saved lives? Here ya go ya dumb shit.

Fucking troll.

"do you have some examples of properly executed mandatory evacuations you would like to hold up as a model?"

Tsk. Tsk. Name calling lefty trolls are so bothersome. Well Mr. No Name you can google up any coastal county from North Carolina south to Key West and sometime in the last 20 years all of them have done it. There's a reason

The barrier islands/keys in FL have been mandatory evac'd without a complete ClusterFuck™ scrum.

Rest of comment lost to inadvertant use of reserved html character [D'OH]:

There's a reason <100 people were killed when Andrew hit South Florida in 1992. I happen to know because I lived there then.

A few days ago I read a blog where they said two witnesses saw a barge hit the levee. I knew if that was true, then it would be inside the break and look at the below......... I guess the MSM can't blame the COE....... Wonder who owned the barge?

From Captain Quarters

A Barge hit the levee........

checkout out
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/tporleans/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_tporleans/archives/2005_09.html#077196

Ha!
Anonymous troll asks for, and gets his ass handed to him.
How can you not love that? The people on this site are so generous that way.

OT: For those of you in areas that are taking in lots of refugees (looks like pretty much everywhere, including my state of CT), it couldn't hurt to put a shotgun behind the door right now, just in case you don't already have one.

No offense to the good and suffering people; but that area was a large pocket of crime for a long time, and who knows how far and wide all of this will have been spread.

And then we get to the wisdom of widely dispersing these folks who have been exposed to hygiene conditions we don't even see in the third world.

Not that we have any other good ways of dealing with so many.
But be prepared.

A Barge hit the levee........

I'll bet KKKarl Rove was driving it!

The "heroic" barge driver was trying to PLUG the hole after RovesRaiders blasted it open.

I'm positive that one of these days a troll will graciously admit his mistake and apologize for flinging insults at the people who corrected him.

I'm also positive that today is not that day.

I'm positive flying pigs will come to my apartment bearing several bags full of gold coins. Oh wait, no I'm not.

you tell me genius. do you have some examples of properly executed mandatory evacuations you would like to hold up as a model?

Okay. How about this one?

Or this one?

And finally, there's this one.

Any questions?

Troll? Hello?

*chirp* *chirp*

Think we scared him/her away?

Nagin finally orders mandatory evacuations, sort of...

Damn my html skills.

Gene Wilder: Damn your eyes!

Marty Feldman: Too late!

Not to stand up for the troll, but a "mandatory" evacuation from a hurricane doesn't go straight to "the sheriff's a-comin fo' us". But (as the links provided above can attest) there's more than a little downside to not complying. I've been trying to explain the insanity in New Orleans in various comments aroud the 'sphere, and finally gave up. Just read this.

In Palm Beach county, the sheriff or local cops went around and made people sign what amounts to a "I'm stupid and accept responsibility for my own death" release if they refused to clear out of the mandatory evac areas.

As I was evacuating and listening to the orders being given on every radio station, the officials said exactly "this is the big hurricane that we've always feared. Get your ASS out of the city". I don't know how many of you have been into New Orleans (not just Bourbon Street), but physically removing everyone who WANTED to stay was not a physical possibility. Absoulutely there was not enough done to evacuate the poor and infirm and Blanco and Nagin should hang for that, but even now there are people who refuse to leave. Finally, the shotgun remark was on the money - despite Blanco's characterization of the looters/murderers/rapists as "petty" criminals - many of these people are career criminals who lived in parts of N.O. that police refused to go. Good luck to the police forces around the country, we've grown some pretty nasty criminals down here.

"Give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot" -- Aaron Broussard , President, Jefferson Parish

This is a sad time for all of us who live in Louisiana. While I'm personally thankful for the efforts of thousands of people from across America who have helped us in our state's greatest time of need, I'm enraged by the lack of responsibility displayed over the last few weeks by many of the officials we elected.

Kathleen Blanco, the Governor of Louisiana is completely and solely to blame for our lack of preparedness and for mishandling the rescue and relief operations in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Governor Blanco's reckless disregard for the citizens of our state before the hurricane struck and her inexplicable actions in the days afterward can only be considered malfeasance of office. I think Mr. Broussard said it best. The state of Louisiana needs a new Governor.

Specifically Governor Kathleen Blanco:
1) Failed to execute the state's emergency plan to safeguard the citizens by ordering an evacuation of Southern Louisiana in a timely manner.
2) Purposefully withheld food, water and hygiene items from the tens of thousands of victims stranded at the Superdome and the New Orleans Convention Center in an effort to get them to leave the area.
3) Delayed sending the Louisiana National Guard to maintain order in the city of New Orleans allowing snipers to delay rescue efforts and permitting looters to ransack homes and businesses.
4) Chose to spend the days after Hurricane Katrina engaged in partisan bickering and finger pointing rather than giving FEMA and the U.S. military the authority they needed to take over the rescue effort, relieve suffering, and save lives.
Governor Blanco is indecisive, more concerned with politics than duty, and has demonstrated a serious lack of judgment that clearly shows she is the wrong person to be the chief executive of Louisiana. I believe Governor Blanco should be removed from office immediately and replaced by a competent individual with the ability to take responsibility and make the decisions necessary to lead our state.

Governor Blanco, you can point the finger at whoever you want. You can obfuscate the truth and deny culpability in as many press conferences as you would like. Until the day you stand before the citizens of Louisiana, admit your mistakes, and accept responsibility for your poor choices, I will not rest. Your actions cost lives, and you should be replaced.

Impeach Kathleen Blanco