“It seems to me that the poor should have had the EASIEST time leaving. They don’t need to pay for an extended leave from their home, they could have just packed a few belongings and walked away to start over somewhere else. What did they have to lose?
When the wealthy evacuate, they leave behind nice houses, expensive cars, possibly pets that they treat as members of the family, valuable jewelry, family heirlooms, etc. This makes it emotionally difficult for wealthy people to leave. But by definition, the poor do not have this burden: they either rent their homes, or they are in public housing; their cars are practically junk anyway; and they don’t have any valuable possessions. This is what it means to be poor. These people could just pick up their few belongings, buy a one-way bus ticket to any city and be poor there. Supposing they even had jobs in NO, it’s not like minimum wage jobs are hard to come by.”
More at the link if you can stand it.
I’m going to have one stiff drink. And then another. I don’t recognize that as a fellow human much less a fellow American.
Update: For the record, that comment and all the others shown on Corrente are not made by Jane Galt herself. They are comments from her readers. I’m not sure what that says about her, but the post to which this is attached seems to have been written by a member of the human species.
Bill O’Reilly is trying with all his might to make this story about “thugs” and bad Democrats but both Fox news reporters on the ground are having none of it. Shepard Smith and Steve Harrigan are both insisting that the story is about people dying and starving on the streets of New Orleans. Smith is particularly upset that the mayor sent buses to the Hyatt today and took tourists over to the Superdome and let them off at the front of the line.
O’Reilly says “you sound so bitter” and said they need a strong leader like Rudy Giuliani. Smith replies that what they needed “on the first day was food and water and what they needed on the second day was food and water and what they needed on the third day was food and water.”
O’Reilly is practically rolling his eyes with impatience at Smith’s pussified outrage about the plight of a bunch of losers who were asking for it. He really, really wants to talk about scary black boogeymen and steppin-fetchit politicans. It doesn’t work out. He looks relieved to move over to the Natalee Holloway story.
NOT A NATIONAL DISGRACE [Rich Lowry] A dissent from this column I wrote yesterday:
It is not. It is – or ought to be – a disgrace and an embarrassment to Louisiana and New Orleans. I see the way Florida prepares for and responds to hurricanes; I see the way Mississippi and Alabama are dealing with this one; I’ve seen the Carolinas and Virginia deal with hurricanes, too. I’ve been in Miami and Norfolk when hurricanes hit, though not as severe as this one, and seen folks come together to support each other in the crisis. I see the outpouring of support from surrounding states and from the federal government heading to Louisiana as fast as it can.
And then I see citizens of New Orleans shooting, raping, burning, and plundering while their government officials stand by helplessly…
Fox News reporters have played this story pretty straight (for them) and it’s making the stars extremely uncomfortable. Somebody’s going to have to have a talk with the supporting cast. They are going off script.
Update: Sean’s up now and he’s equally uncomfortable with Shep’s story about the thousands still stuck on freeways and bridges with no food and water — who have been ignored for days now. He’s been covering one single bridge for days and nobody knows why they haven’t been helped yet. He’s almost shrill.
Now Geraldo comes on and he freaks out, begging the authorities to let people still stuck at the convention center walk out of town. Shep comes back and he says they have checkpoints set up turning people back to the city if they try. (wtf?) They are both on the verge of tears.
Sean says they need to get some perspective and Shep screams at him “this is the perspective!”
This was some amazing TV. Kudos to Shep Smith and Geraldo for not letting O’Reilly and Hannity spin their GOP “resolve” apologia bullshit. I’m fairly shocked.
Vines also said U.S. troops in Iraq whose family members were injured or killed by Hurricane Katrina may be allowed to go home, but those who have no confirmed casualties among family members will have to stay in Iraq.
If their families are mere refugees, I guess it’s tough shit.
They could come home if Jonah Goldberg and his friends took their place, though. Surely they’ll be willing to make that sacrifice, right?
For three days, Corps officials had lamented the difficulty of gaining access to the canal, but yesterday a local contractor, Boh Bros. Construction Co., apparently drove to the mouth of the canal and started placing a set of steel sheet pilings to isolate the canal from the lake. This job was finished yesterday afternoon.
What’s the deal? Aren’t engineers usually pretty good at figuring out how to get into inaccessible places?
I wonder if maybe they were actually all askeered of the roving thugs that seem to have been reported everywhere, but rarely seen? A number of reports in today’s newspapers are much more skeptical of the criminal anarchy that was reported all day yesterday. It was more than a little bit odd that the news crews that had access all over the city weren’t able to get any pictures of these roving gangs of beasts that were said to be stalking everyone.
It’s not that I doubt that there was a lot of criminal activity. People both evil and desperate become barbaric when the social order breaks down. But the stories sound an awful lot like the tall tales we’ve heard for centuries in this country about barbaric slave revolts. It’s like a tick that comes back whenever people see large numbers of poor, angry black people.
Still making excuses. Still being an asshole. Nobody had the balls to ask him why he was fucking around in Coronado, California with country music stars while the levees were overflowing. It wouldn’t be polite, I guess. Too bad he wasn’t getting a blow job — they would have been all over it.
Has everyone noticed that Bush seems to be saying that “Haley” handled his disaster better than Louisiana? (Mostly by being “ruthless” I would guess.)
I’ve been thinking these last two days that we may just see Haley Barbour being the anointed Bush successor after this. Peggy Nooner was gushing all over him yesterday. Bush doesn’t have enough good things to say about him. And Larry King has been delivering spectacular sycophancy to him every night. Southern governor and a big money lobbyist/political hack both. Other than the fact that he’s not physically fit, he’s Bush’s wet dream.
I heard this shocking exchange between Aaron Brown and Jamie MacIntyre lst night too, and was stunned. There is clearly a culture of pass-the-buck whining about military failure taking over the Pentagon if their first reaction is to complain about partisanship…
But I think there is more to it. Everyone has noted that Michael Brown (the estate planning lawyer/Bush crony who is in charge of the biggest logistical challenge in FEMA’s history) was making the rounds implying that the victims asked for what they got when they didn’t obey the mandatory evacuation. But he wasn’t the only one who said this explicitly. I wrote yesterday that Michael Chertoff, his boss, said the same thing:
“The critical thing was to get people out of there before the disaster,” he said on NBC’s Today program. “Some people chose not to obey that order. That was a mistake on their part.”
This was an official talking point. On Thursday, September 1st, three days after the scope of the disaster was well known, George W. Bush sent his disaster officials out to the media with the instructions that they were to blame the victims — the same day that we were seeing dead bodies and dehydrated children all over our television sets.
Is it really appropriate for all these disaster officials to be on television pretending to be “briefing” the president (who is dressed in his campaign costume) so that he can appear to be engaged in the problem? Don’t they have better things to do than raise Bush’s poll numbers?
Now he’s “going to go comfort some people.” Who says he isn’t doing his job?
Update: Well, waddaya know. The next pictures we see are of Bush “comforting” a pretty young black woman and her white husband(?) They were very good. Must have had an awesome audition to make it onto “Presidential Kabuki: In Excess.”
Lacking any reliable source of information about how to proceed, residents from the flooded eastern parts of the city and stranded visitors wander westward in a state of desperation. People shout at cars, pleading for rides to anywhere, and ask each other where they’re headed. Several thousand residents forced from their homes line Convention Center Avenue, where rumor has it evacuations were set to begin. National Guard personnel say they had no immediate plans to begin evacuations from that location.
While chatting with some of the National Guardsmen, another guardsman approaches and informs us that a woman is in the middle of a stroke around the corner. The guardsmen shrug. There is no emergency medical tent in the downtown area, and many people in need of medicine have no way of getting what they need, even inside the shelters. On our way into the French Quarter, a wild-eyed man flags down our car, begging us for insulin or information about where some can be found. We cannot help him.
In contrast, some residents of the French Quarter appear comfortable, well-fed and relaxed. About 150 New Orleans police officers have commandeered the Royal Omni Hotel, part of the international luxury chain of Omni hotels that is housed in an elegant 19th century building, complete with crystal chandeliers and a rooftop pool. “All of the officers that are here, I can tell you in a classical sense, are gladiators,” says Capt. Kevin Anderson, commander of the Eighth District of the NOPD (French Quarter). “To be able to put your family’s concerns aside to protect the citizens of New Orleans, it’s just an awesome job,” he says.
Across the street from the Royal Omni at the Eighth District police department, several police officers keep a wary eye on the street with shotguns at the ready, while some fellow officers grill sausage links over charcoal barbecues. They are under strict orders not to communicate with the media. Capt. Anderson does confirm, however, that locations where officers were housed came under gunfire on Tuesday night. No officers were injured. “It is a very dangerous situation that we’re in,” Anderson says.
Apart from rescue operations, the police department patrols for looters, who have ransacked stores in virtually every part of the city. Looters are visible on every street corner. Every kind of business, from rundown corner markets to the Gucci storefront on South Peters Street, has been looted.
We walk half a block down Royal Street from the Eighth District headquarters and come upon Brennan’s Restaurant, one of New Orleans’ most venerable dining institutions. The Brennans are a high-profile family of restaurateurs and run several of the highest-end eateries in town. Jimmy Brennan and a crew of his relatives are holing up in the restaurant along with the chef, Lazone Randolph. They are sleeping on air mattresses, drinking Cheval Blanc, and feasting on the restaurant’s reserves of haute Creole food.
The atmosphere in the French Quarter, while relatively quiet, is decidedly tense, but Brennan isn’t worried. “We’re not too concerned. The police let us go over to the Royal Omni, to take a shower, freshen up, and we cooked them some prime rib. We take care of them, they take care of us,” says Randolph. Two Brennan emissaries whisk past, bearing multilayer chocolate cakes, headed toward the precinct. “This has been working out real well for us,” says Jimmy Brennan.
Contrary to many reports, the French Quarter remains undamaged by flooding. The streets are dry and damage to the 18th and 19th century buildings appears to be minimal. Heavily pierced French Quarter denizens are emerging slowly, almost groggily, and some are looking to evacuate. One woman, wearing a black lace slip and fanning herself with a souvenir fan from a production of “Les Miserables,” makes her way toward the Superdome, carrying no luggage.
I have also spoken today on post here with Army pilots really pissed off that when the helicopter was shot at yesterday at the Superdome, they suspended operations. What I have been told is IT IS A MILITARY HELICOPTER AND YOU ARE PREFORMING A KIND OF MILITARY MISSION AND YOU ARE TAKING FIRE SO WHAT’S THE FUCKING PROBLEM? I heard this from pilots who have served in Iraq. They are really upset right now that it is okay to take fire to liberate Iraqis but it isn’t okay to take fire attempting to rescue and save people in your own country!
I’ve been a little bit gobsmacked by this fraidy-cat reaction to the surly thugs in the streets I’ve been hearing about all day. The national guard and the coast guard are trained to operate in hostile environments where people are shooting at them. And big city police forces are no slouches either.
Yet they completely cancelled the rescue operation because some bozo shot at a helicopter. And the national guard now refuses to escort patients who are being transferred from hospitals that have no power, food and water.
Gosh I sure hope someone is guarding the oil ministry.
Maybe this will show Michael Chertoff that evacuating wasn’t a matter of people stubbornly refusing to obey a mandatory order. These people are rich and white:
BLITZER: The disaster, what’s unfolding in New Orleans, elsewhere in the Gulf as well, the situation, especially, especially worrisome in downtown New Orleans. We have on the line now Phyllis Petrich. She’s stranded in one of the hotels in New Orleans. Phyllis, where exactly are you?
PHYLISS PETRICH, STRANDED IN NEW ORLEANS: I’m at the Ritz Carlton on Canal Street in the French Quarter.
BLITZER: How long have you been there?
PETRICH: We arrived here actually for holiday on Thursday evening and we were evacuated to the Grand Ballroom by the middle of the night Sunday. We have been on rations since then. They have evacuated some of the hotel. There are about 300 people left. The Ritz is trying to get buses in here. FEMA will not let them in. They got a group out last night. And of the three buses that got out, FEMA commandeered one of them. We have no idea where they’ve taken those people. We’re in dire straits here. There is no electricity. The sewage is backing up. As I said, the water supply is running low.
We do have a team here of infection diseases doctors that were here for a conference who have set up a small infirmary to care for the cases of dysentery and vomiting that have come up, as well as other people who have had some illnesses. But all of those medications are now being depleted, and I don’t know that anyone is aware that we’re here. I realize we’re not top priority on anyone’s list, but we are here and we are in dire straits, and we need someone to know that we’re here, to come in and help to get us out of here.
BLITZER: Do you have enough food and water right now, Phyllis?
PETRICH: Well I don’t believe we have very much food left at all. I know that we didn’t have any lunch today. We had just a little biscuit or a cookie for breakfast and all we’re each being given is a glass of water.
BLITZER: And it’s impossible for you simply to leave the hotel and walk out. Not only are there floodwaters there, but it’s dangerous, the violence, the looting, the snipers. It’s a very dangerous situation.
PETRICH: It is a very dangerous situation. Fortunately, the Ritz has been wonderful. Apparently they have a lot of off-duty policemen that they have access to, that are guarding the hotel with shotguns. They themselves are afraid to go outside, because policemen are being shot at. And it is very, very difficult situation here. And I just don’t know how we can impress upon people what is really going on here. I think people just don’t have a concept, and it’s being glossed over, it’s being handled so poorly, it just amazes us to hear what’s going on outside. That people just don’t understand just the seriousness of the situation.
BLITZER: Where are you from, Phyllis?
PETRICH: I’m from Maryland right now. I actually live in Wisconsin, but I’m a long-term job assignment in Maryland.
BLITZER: If your family if your friends are watching, what would you like to say to them? PETRICH: That I am alive and well at this moment. I don’t know what will happen in the future, but I am alive and safe for the time being, and I just want to get home to them.
BLITZER: Are you traveling by yourself or do you have children with you?
PETRICH: With my husband. We came here to celebrate our anniversary. And it’s one we will not forgot for many years to come.
BLITZER: Well, Phyllis, good luck to you. We’ll certainly pass on your concerns to authorities and try to make sure that people don’t forgot that these hotels, including the Ritz Carlton Hotel in the French Quarter, are endangered right now.
PETRICH: I know, and it would be a different situation if we had made the choice of our own volition to stay here. We could not get out. Once the storm started to hit the airlines shut down immediately. And none of us could get flights out. We would have left if we could have, but we could not and that’s why we’re in the situation that we’re in.
BLITZER: One final question, Phyllis, before I let you go. Are there any law enforcement authorities, National Guard, police, first responders, FEMA officials, anyone at the Ritz Carlton Hotel trying to help any of you.
PETRICH: Not that we have seen. No. Not at all.
BLITZER: They’re invisible right now.
PETRICH: They are invisible. We have no idea where they are. We hear bits and pieces who can get information in that the National Guard is around, but where? We have not seen them. We have not seen FEMA officials. We have seen no one.
BLITZER: Well, if it makes you feel any better, we’re told that they’re on the way. We don’t know how long it will take to get there. They’re deploying thousands of troops. But it clearly will take some time for them to get to the scene where you are. Phyllis, we’ll talk with you. And good luck to you, your husband and all your friends. I’m sure you’ve become friendly with a lot of these people at the Ritz Carlton Hotel.
PETRICH: … absolutely wonderful people. There is a group of British nationals that have gotten to BBC. And we’re hoping that with us, trying to get to as much people as we can, they will understand just how dangerous and, you know, difficult the situation is for everyone here.
BLITZER: All right. Thank you very much, Phyllis. Good luck. We’ll check back with you. Phyllis Petrich, like so many others, about 300 people, she said, stranded now at the Ritz Carlton Hotel, and no help in sight, at least not now, and they’re running short of food and water.
Even the Ritz-Carlton is out of food and swimming in shit.
Let’s hope these folks don’t have to go out and try to rustle up some food and water. The president said there is zero tolerance for “looters.” According to Is That Legal, fellows at the American Enterprise Institute agree with Peggy Noonan that looters should be shot:
I think shooting looters is a compassionate way to protect the safety and well-being of law-abiding citizens. Time after time it has been shown that the way to prevent deadly anarchic riots is to take firm decisive action to prevent matters from getting to a tipping point.
Yes, a little summary justice does go a long way toward “preventing matters from getting to the tipping point.” Except, of course, it doesn’t. What is needed is a large, visible police and national guard presence directing rescue activity and keeping order. Why that isn’t happening is the real question.
I seem to remember something in the recent past — a war torn city perhaps — that also dissolved into chaos and anrachy when the authorities failed to provide security. Somebody important said “stuff happens” and “freedom is untidy.” Where was that again? It’s right on the tip of my tongue…
If at first you don’t succeed, clap your hands and do exactly the same thing over and over again.
Five days after Susan Dewey arrived in New Orleans to celebrate her birthday, she was so desperate to get out that she banded with hundreds of other tourists to hire 10 buses for $25,000 to rescue them.
After waiting hours, they learned government officials had commandeered their buses to evacuate others.
[…]
The hurricane hit Monday. The flooding and looting began Tuesday. By Wednesday, Dewey was stealing to eat.
She said hotel staff encouraged guests to loot a nearby store for food, so that’s what Dewey and her boyfriend did.
“I had Power Bars, I had nuts because there were a couple (hotel) rooms open, and we raided their mini bars,” Dewey said.
That day, police went door-to-door to order local residents out of the hotel and to the New Orleans Convention Center, Dewey said.
The handful of managers left at the hotel told guests they had booked 10 buses for $25,000 to evacuate them and those from the Crowne Plaza Astor Downtown. Each passenger paid $45. The hotel staff began lining up elderly and ill people outside about 7:30 p.m.
“I couldn’t count how many wheelchairs you saw,” Dewey said.
The guests waited until 9:30 p.m. when a manager told them the buses were confiscated by the military.
Also planning to leave on one of the buses was Bill Hedrick, a Houston oilman, and his family, including his mother-in-law, who uses a walker.
“We kept hearing they were coming, they were coming,” he said. When the crowd learned the buses would never arrive, “everyone was totally stunned,” said Hedrick, who moved on to the convention center.
Dewey said she was ordered to head to the convention center