Latest Katrina News?

I'm opening this thread as a place for you to share links, thoughts, posts, etc. about Katrina and the aftermath and the related politics, memories of New Orleans, what have you.

(I'm doing this because people (myself included) seem to need to talk this through and share info and support -- and this impulse is larger than any one of my previous post topics. So have at it...)

Comments

[Tiruncula]

Rana, one thing I keep thinking about is how this compares to 9/11 as a watershed moment in our national consciousness. We've been told for four years to divide modern history into pre- and post-9/11, but for me, this looks like being the more important moment of change in how I think about my world. For all its horror, 9/11 confirmed - I now see in retrospect - my assumptions about how citizens react in a crisis and how, pre-attack failures notwithstanding, government at many levels comes to the aid of its citizens. This week has shaken those beliefs profoundly. After 9/11 I was profoundly reassured that even such a horrific attack could not fundamentally affect American institutions. No longer.

[Joel]

The trouble with 9-11 is that we let the news coverage pummel us into numbness and then signed off a blank check.

They're trying it again with their insistances that the "president couldn't have stopped this from happening". No one expect him to stop a hurricane, but he's done a sloppy sloppy job helping those in the wake of it.

More on my blog.

[coturnix]

I have collected lots of links here:
http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/2005/09/best-katrina-blogging-so-far.html

[Phantom Scribbler]

I like what Elizabeth had to say here:
http://www.halfchangedworld.com/2005/09/leadership.html

[Rana]

Tiruncula - that's a really great point. I do remember thinking during 9/11's aftermath that the president wasn't taking as much advantage of American community can-do spirit (remember his admonition that we should all "go shopping"?) nor international goodwill as he could or ought, but I didn't see that as a failure, just a shortcoming.

Now, though... it's not even the bungling, which is terrible, or the lack of coordination. We've seen these things before, and they don't inspire doubt in the whole enterprise. It's not even the wholesale mismanagement of woefully underfunded FEMA that gets me, nor even the people asking dumb questions about "why didn't they leave" or "why was New Orleans built there" -- no surprises there, really.

No, it's the utter callous disregard of human suffering in order to score political points that is horrifying me, and which seems to be the true legacy of this administration and this style of politics. You see it at the bottom in the freeper threads, but they are aided and encouraged by media demagogues like Rush and bland pundits in the papers and on tv. But far far worse, we see it at the top, with the whole Bush admininstration's unwillingness to take this seriously (everyone on vacation at once? and staying on vacation? WTF!), their cavelier dismissal of real concerns and real suffering, their instinctual tendency to see this as an event needing spinning rather than as human beings needing help. It makes me sick, and I wonder more often than not how the hell we ended up with a royal court instead of democratically elected political representatives at the helm.

coturnix - thanks!

[Rana]

Thanks, Phantom!

[Rana]

AmericaBlog has a round-up of their popular posts on Katrina from last week.

If you haven't been visiting the site, I strongly encourage you to do so -- it's a horrifying record of the administration's mal-administration and the suffering it caused.

[Rana]

Here's where you can go to email your Representatives and Senators: http://www.webslingerz.com/jhoffman/congress-email.html.

Ask them to find out for you why Bush was on vacation. Or why he doesn't seem to care about the victims. Or why he's been doing all these photo ops instead of helping. Cry and beg for information and help if your reps are Republicans. Demand impeachment proceedings start if they are Democrats. Don't let Bush get away with his spin!

[Jane Dark]

Check this out: Al Gore has been chartering flights to airlift Katrina victims.

It's exactly the sort of leadership that I was calling for earlier today at my own blog, from Democratic leaders especially.

I also like the fact that he's refusing to be interviewed about it.

[Rana]

Jane, that _is_ quite good. I'd already been a sort of admirer of Gore for his environmental stuff (he's not as radical as he gets painted, but he is quite solid in that area) and during the last few years my admiration of him has grown. Good on him.