History will remember

The California legislature approved gay marriage today -- before voting in favour, one of the assembly members said: "There are a handful of issues where history will record where we were. This is one of them".
Yes, I agree with this. Now Arnold Schwarzenegger has to decide whether to veto this or not. If I could, I would say this to him:
Arnold, changes are good that you will be a one-term governor. Your approval rating is 36 per cent. So don't worry about strategizing. Show guts and leadership by deciding this one based on the right decision for California, and the country. You know what that is.

Photos of NO Garden District today

Gulfsails is a New Orleans blogger, and he posted these today on his website.
He writes about having a soldier check his ID "The soldier while examining my ID, explained that there was a pocket of looting happening and that the troops were "taking care of it". He passed me through, but before I drove on , this soldier - probably only 18 - began apologizing to me. "I'm so sorry that we didn't get here sooner." I kept telling him to not be sorry, and thanked him over and over for being here now." He also provides this update on street conditions: "Remarkably St. Charles is fairly clean. The Parish had obviously opened up the road, but it was weird, there are more trees down in Jeff. On St. Charles I saw NO evidence of the looting of homes . . . Streets that I traveled on: State, Nashville, Prytania, Jefferon, Magazine, Jackson, Carrollton, Palmer, Calhoun, 1st, Camp, Napoleon, Broadway, and some minor side streets. All appeared the same. There was only one home that I saw which was caved in - probably termite infestation. Also, I saw NO evidence of cars broken into. My overall takeaway from this first foray into the city is that much of the looting in at least these residential areas is overblown. The actual hurricane damage is relegated to downed trees. There is effectively only light to moderate roof damage which is pretty much the same thing we've seen along the river in Jefferson Parish. Oh yeah, St. Joe's Bar looks like it could open tonight."
Here are the photos:
I think this says "Keep the Faith" which could be New Orleans' motto now.











And notice the parking ticket.

Great Line of the Day

From our favourite president -- I mean Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard -- speaking to the Today Show: "So I'm asking Congress, please investigate this now. Take whatever idiot they have at the top of whatever agency and give me a better idiot. Give me a caring idiot. Give me a sensitive idiot. Just don't give me the same idiot."
There is a lot of truth to this, isn't there? I know what he means.
We all screw up in our jobs sometimes -- in New Orleans, of course, the screwups were monumental and deadly. But if we just CARE about what we do, rather than caring only about lawsuits and asscovering, well, at least then, our errors will be made on the side of humanity. . .
For example, last week, it might have turned out to have been a mistake for FEMA to let into the city all those hundreds of people who wanted to help, the firefighters from Houston and the rescue boats from Florida and the bus drivers from Chicago and the Red Cross workers and the Cuban doctors -- yes, they might have got themselves shot at or needed rescuing themselves or they might have been drowned themselves, some of them.
But in the end, they couldn't possibly have harmed any one more than FEMA did by not being there at all. And so in the end, the "error" of letting them in would have been forgiveable because it would have been an error on the side of humanity. It would have been the mistake of a caring idiot.

Line of the day, but not a great one

Editor and Publisher reports on a visit by Barbara Bush to the evacuees in Houston. She said "What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Catherine's dog and cat photos

In Comments to the last post, Catherine supplied a great link to a batch of AP dog and cat photos by photographer Roger deForest. Here are my favorites:







And Snowball is safe! If you read the CNN story in my last link, it described a little boy in despair at having to leave behind his dog Snowball -- well, according to Unquiet Mind (who also posted the dog photos), Snowball was rescued after all and is safe.

The innocents

For me, personally, I think the worst piece of video I saw all week was one where an elderly man was taken off a roof by a boat -- and his dog was left behind. To starve, or to drown, I guess.
The dog stood there in the sun watching as the boat left.
Why would I get upset at the abandonment of a dog, when so many people died? Maybe because in some essential way the dogs are the ones most innocent. We people have some capacity to act independently, to decide what to do, to leave or to stay. Our dogs do not -- they are just with us, accepting whatever we decide for them, remaining loyal and steadfast. Its terrible when the faith they have in people is betrayed, however necessary such a choice is.
This CNN story talks about how horrible this week has been for pet owners: Evacuees anguished at leaving pets behind It quotes one rescuer saying "One woman told me 'I've lost my house, my job, my car and I am not turning my dog loose to starve,"
A CTV story last week covered a group who were hiding in an apartment in New Orleans. One of the people there was a man with three dogs -- they swam together through the flooding for 12 or more hours until this group of people found them. He was crying when he talked about how he did not know what he would do next but he would not be separated from his dogs.
Yes, I agree.
My husband and I talked this week about disaster plans, and front and centre we agreed we could never make a plan which did not include our dogs.
Two sites I will be checking: the ASPCA has a hurricane diary where they keep people informed about their shelter activity. And Petfinder.com is posting reports on how animals are doing. They have crews out looking for standed animals.
Maybe they rescued that dog off that roof. I can hope, can't it?
Three score and ten are given to man,
But ours is a much briefer span.
So, though I give you all my heart,
The time will come when we must part.
But all around you, you will see,
Creatures that speak to you of me;
A tired horse, a hunted thing,
A sparrow with a broken wing ...
Pity - and help (I know you will)
And somehow, I will be with you still;
And I shall know, although I'm gone,
The love I gave you lingers on.
(- author unknown)

Nature bats last

Here's an interesting article from the San Francisco Chronicle "When camping skills are needed to survive". It speaks to the "culture of emergency preparedness" which I have blogged about.

. . . anybody who spends time in the wilderness is always ready. All they need to do is pull out their backpack. In the different compartments and pockets will be everything they need . . . so they can leave at any moment. So if a natural disaster hits by surprise, like an earthquake, for instance, it can take about five minutes to react to it -- haul out the backpack and camping gear . . .

There is lots of info on the net about survival -- maybe even too much. For example, when I Google "Red Cross survival list" I get 1.4 million hits. But here is a basic supply list:

Water (four liters per person per day)
Food (for three days to a week)
first aid kit
camp stove or barbeque
package of important records (health numbers, list of medications, credit card numbers, relative's addresses, etc.etc)
cash for a week
phone
disaster kit containing things like an emergency preparedness manual; flashlight and extra batteries; radio; waterproof matches; candles, plastic garbage bags and zip-lock bags, waterless antibacterial hand soap, disinfectant, aluminum foil, can opener etc.

Most important, perhaps, would be just to THINK about this in advance, to make a plan.

After all these years . . .

Sigh!

Parents and coaches of a Calgary junior soccer team are angry after a Sikh player was barred from a game for insisting on wearing his religious headscarf . . . "I am told by the referees here that this is a FIFA rule," said Michael Smith, referring to soccer's international governing body . . . But [Calgery coach] Moretti said he discovered the federation has no such rule.

Oops! There is ome rule against wearing "decorative" pieces (ie jewelry) but the Sikh headscarf is hardly that. I thought everybody knew that by now.

Al Gore - the president they should have had

As some other blogger said, people face disaster with the president they have rather than the president they might want.
Here is the president they should have had, showing what decisive action can do, as reported in this Knoxville News Sentinel story Haven from fury - Mercy Flight Brings Evacuees to ET

They saw nature's unmatched fury up close. Now they would see unbridled human compassion. About 140 people - mostly elderly and infirm - arrived Saturday at McGhee Tyson Airport on a chartered mercy flight from hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, welcomed to East Tennessee by a bright sun and a host of medical professionals straining at the reins to help their fellow human beings without regard to whether they were on the clock. The displaced hurricane victims came to Tennessee on a hastily arranged flight, accompanied by doctors and carrying whatever they had in boxes, bags or, in one case, an old suitcase tied up with rope. Former Vice President Al Gore arranged the flight and was on board, but he declined to take credit for the airlift, fearing it would be "politicized." [Emphasis mine] The patients and evacuees arrived aboard an American Airlines MD-80 about 3:15 p.m. The unloading process took almost two hours, as some walked hesitantly down a staircase beneath the rear of the aircraft. Others were rolled down a ramp from the front of the plane to waiting wheelchairs. Personnel from Rural/Metro and the Tennessee Air National Guard volunteered their services, as did others, to get the patients and evacuees loaded onto buses or ambulances . . . One of the doctors on board the flight was Dr. Anderson Spickard of Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, who said he had a "personal and professional" relationship with Gore. Spickard said Gore called him about 11 p.m. Friday to ask him to participate in the flight. "The jet was chartered," he said. "It was a private effort." Gore chartered the plane, but, Spickard said, "we'll decide who pays for it later." The doctor said the patients on the plane traveled well and added that he was "pleased" with Knoxville and Knox County's response to the call for help. The patients, he said, "didn't know what kindness" they would receive here. Spickard said the plane would leave McGhee Tyson Saturday evening for Dallas, where he would spend the night before making another mercy flight, possibly to Chattanooga, Nashville or Chicago. The plan had been to make two flights Saturday, Spickard said, but delays in getting to Knoxville meant that the plane could not get back to New Orleans before dark. And there are no landing lights at New Orleans International Airport. Mayor Ragsdale said he was touched by some of the heart-wrenching stories the people told him as they disembarked from the plane. One, he said, was a man of 80-plus years who described being on his roof for three days before being rescued. Another was in an attic that almost filled with water. A third was a man who got off the plane barefooted and with obvious skin trauma to his lower legs, who told the mayor of having to stand in water for 2-3 days. "Some folks are mentally exhausted," he said. And, the mayor said, he has been notified that the Knoxville area can expect as many as 1,500 more evacuees in coming days . . . Gore chose not to speak to the assembled media, but he was seen in a black T-shirt and jeans moving rapidly from one side of the plane to the other assisting with the off-loading operation. Forty people aboard the plane were uninjured evacuees, mostly family members of the elderly patients. Two or three children and a dog also were on board.

Gay pride lives in New Orleans

In 'New Orleans turns attention to its dead' MSNBC reports:Amid the tragedy, about two dozen people gathered in the French Quarter for the Decadence Parade, an annual Labor Day gay celebration. Matt Menold, 23, a street musician wearing a sombrero and a guitar slung over his back, said: 'It's New Orleans, man. We're going to celebrate."
Here is the AP photo:

The caption reads: Candice Jameson, left, 21, holds her umbrella as she celebrates the Decadence Parade in the historic French Quarter in New Orleans, La., Sunday, Sept. 4, 2005. The Decadence Parade is an annual gay celebration event. At right is John Lambert. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
In this AP story, French Quarter Holdouts create "Tribes' reporter Allen Breed writes

While hundreds of thousands fled the below-sea-level city before the storm, many refused to leave the Vieux Carre, or old quarter. Built on some of the highest ground around and equipped with underground power lines, residents considered it about the safest place to be. Katrina blew off roof slates and knocked down some already-unstable buildings but otherwise left the 18th and 19th century homes with their trademark iron balconies intact. Even without water and power, most preferred it to the squalor and death in the emergency shelters set up at the Superdome and Convention Center. But what had at first been a refuge soon became an ornate prison. Police came through commandeering drivable vehicles and siphoning gas. Officials took over a hotel and ejected the guests. An officer pumped his shotgun at a group trying to return to their hotel on Chartres Street. "This is our block," he said, pointing the gun down a side street. "Go that way." Jack Jones, a retired oil rig worker, bought a huge generator and stocked up on gasoline. But after hearing automatic gunfire on the next block one night, he became too afraid to use it — for fear of drawing attention. Still, he continues to boil his clothes in vinegar and dip water out of neighbors' pools for toilet flushing and bathing. "They may have to shoot me to get me out of here," he said. "I'm much better off here than anyplace they might take me." . . . many who stayed behind were the working poor — residents of the cramped spaces above the restaurants and shops. Tired of waiting for trucks to come with food and water, residents turned to each other. Johnny White's is famous for never closing, even during a hurricane. The doors don't even have locks. Since the storm, it has become more than a bar. Along with the warm beer and shots, the bartenders passed out scrounged military Meals Ready to Eat and bottled water to the people who drive the mule carts, bus the tables and hawk the T-shirts that keep the Quarter's economy humming. "It's our community center," said Marcie Ramsey, 33, whom Katrina promoted from graveyard shift bartender to acting manager. For some, the bar has also become a hospital. Tryphonas, who restores buildings in the Quarter, left the neighborhood briefly Saturday. Someone hit in the head with a 2-by-4 and stole his last $5. When Tryphonas showed up at Johnny White's with his left ear split in two, Joseph Bellomy — a customer pressed into service as a bartender — put a wooden spoon between Tryphonas' teeth and used a needle and thread to sew it up. Military medics who later looked at Bellomy's handiwork decided to simply bandage the ear. "That's my savior," Tryphonas said, raising his beer in salute to the former Air Force medical assistant. A few blocks away, a dozen people in three houses got together and divided the labor. One group went to the Mississippi River to haul water, one cooked, one washed the dishes. "We're the tribe of 12," 76-year-old Carolyn Krack said as she sat on the sidewalk with a cup of coffee, a packet of cigarettes and a box of pralines. The tribe, whose members included a doctor, a merchant and a store clerk, improvised survival tactics. Krack, for example, brushed her dentures with antibacterial dish soap. It had been a tribe of 13, but a member died Wednesday of a drug overdose. After some negotiating, the police carried the body out on the trunk of a car. The neighbors knew the man only as Jersey. Tribe member Dave Rabalais, a clothing store owner, said he thinks the authorities could restore utilities to the Quarter. But he knows that would only bring "resentment and the riffraff." "The French Quarter is the blood line of New Orleans," he said. "They can't let anything happen to this." On Sunday, the tribe of 12 became a tribe of eight. Four white tour buses rolled into the Quarter under Humvee escort. National Guardsmen told residents they had one hour to gather their belongings and get a ride out. Four of the tribe members decided to leave.

If Skeltor thinks he can get the rest of them to leave so that this city before it is "de-watered" -- and where in the world did THAT term come from? -- he will have to think again.

At last, a happy story

From the DomeBlog in Houston, a volunteer describes how the New Orleans evacuees are being treated:

Evacuees are brought into the hall in a registration area, where they are given fresh clothes, allowed to take showers and given a plastic badge to show they'd been through the sign-in process. The clothes they are wearing are tagged and taken over to the Hilton across the street, where they are laundered. The evacuees find a place to sleep in a giant room filled with air mattresses. From a distance, it looks like a sea. The room is softly lit; it's soothing. They are then brought into the distribution area. There were enough volunteers that many people had a 'personal shopper' who helped them find what they needed, and sometimes carried bags.
As they enter the distribution area, they walk a gauntlet of volunteers who hold baby strollers. Parents who don't have a stroller are offered one, and everyone applauds as the evacuees pass. They are treated like heroes. My daughter stood in this line with a box of toys, making sure each child was handed one as he or she came in. 'I made sure each one of them laughed,' she said.

They have endured so much, and will have to rebuild their lives economically and socially and psychologically. But finally, for at least a few minutes, they are being treated like the heroes they are.

Great line of the day

From Internik at Daily Kos 'I Am More Angry Than I Have Ever Been In My Life and It Is A Righteous and Purposeful Indignation'

Even by conservative thinking, the most basic job of the government is to protect the lives of its citizens and Bush just proved how much of a rat's ass conservatives actually give about the security of the America people . . . Lake New Orleans is the end product of the every-man-for-himself selfishness of the American conservative movement which has not solved any of our nations problems. So I have these words for all you Anti-American, Anti-Government, Conservative Assholes: You want to cut my taxes? Fuck you. My taxes protect American lives. You want to downsize the government? Fuck you. My government defends the American people. You want the government off your back? Fuck you. My government watches my back. Conservatism is dead, washed away by the waters of Hurricane Katrina. And when anyone tries to spread its un-human contemptuous philosophy, or support its vile proponents, I will remember New Orleans and they will be struck down by my righteous retribution. I Will Remember New Orleans.

42,000 plus are STILL NOT EVACUATED!

Goddamn it!
From Sunday's Washington Post: Many Evacuated, but Thousands Still Waiting: "About 42,000 people had been evacuated from the city by Saturday afternoon, with roughly the same number remaining, city officials said."
Emphasis mine. And then it says "Search-and-rescue efforts continued in flooded areas of the city, where an unknown number of people wait in their homes, on rooftops or in makeshift shelters."
So, it has taken them three full days (Thursday, Friday and Saturday) to evacuate 42,000 people. And now they're saying they STILL have 42,000 people to move, PLUS all of the people still existing on the roofs.
I hope the media keeps the pressure on -- keep crying Geraldo, keep screaming Anderson Cooper -- because at this rate, they won't finish this screwed-up evalucation for another week.
Also posted at Kos.

No matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up

Daily Kos has a number of diaries up talking about this: Intentional withholding of aid? : the evidence [updated with lots of links].
The level of incompetence displayed by governments around Hurricane Katrina is so staggering that people are actually thinking there was some deliberate action here to prevent rescues -- seizing on the opportunity for gentrification by clearing away all those poor people.
I don't know -- even thinking this way seems totally tin-foil. But as Lily Tomlin once said "no matter how cynical I get, I just can't keep up". Yesterday, even CNN news people were talking about what a great photo op it was for Bush that the army convoy was heading to the convention centre as he was touring the area -- and I thought, oh come on. Now we hear that the Louisana governor questioned whether all the equipment brought in to repair one of the levee breaks was just backdrop, because the equipment is gone today.
Then again, maybe the repair crew just didn't have their paperwork done yet -- as Hunter notes, the missing requisition excuse seems to be moving to the fore as the reason why no one could get anything done.
After the tsumani, Senate majority leader Frist was touring the area and was heard to say to his photographer "get some devastation in the back".
Is Bush just saying "get some rescue in the back"?

Its a city, not a bunch of condominium lofts

So now they are talking about the rebuilding of New Orleans as though it was some kind of "warehouse condominium" project.
They think it will be like what happens when developers buy an old warehouse and renovate it into trendy loft condominiums. They think they can empty the city completely so it can be drained and cleaned up and rebuilt and then -- and only then-- will everybody be able to move back in.
This is about as realistic as the 3000 lb sandbag idea -- sounds a neat and simple solution in theory; totally unrealistic in practice.
So typical of the way rich people think -- people who would never dream of staying in their house during a major renovation, but instead would move to a hotel and only come back when everything is finished and cleaned up. In its breathtaking impracticality, of course, this idea is not dissimilar to many of the other ideas which have come out of the Bush administration -- these guys are famous for this faith-based thinking, that they can just wish for something and voila, it is done!
Give your heads a shake. Ain't gonna happen.
The reason is a plot point in all those great "end of the world" novels -- Lucifer's Hammer, and Warday, and Out of the Deeps, and No Blade of Grass. It happened in London during the Blitz. It happened in Paris in 1945, and in New York after 911.
People will not leave. People love their cities.
People in particular love New Orleans.
In checking that new blog I found yesterday, The Interdictor, this guy wants to stay:

Outpost Crystal is still secured and still kicking. We've got people begging us to leave, but that's not going to happen. We might lose Charlie Squad depending on internect connectivity, but Alpha Squad and Bravo Squad are going nowhere until New Orleans' infrastructure is rebuilt or declared permanently and irrevocably destroyed. As far as I'm concerned, this building is my post, and it will not be abandoned until I'm properly relieved.

And judging by the photos he has posted on his blog, the area of the city he lives in looks pretty normal -- needs a good cleanup, but it looks like any city would after a windstorm. Its messy but its not a disaster area, the streets are dry, the buildings look intact, windows not blown out. The photos show people bicycling by, the occasional car, and a fire truck coming past. The thousands of people who used to live in this area are going to want to come back as soon as they can -- they left all their stuff behind, and they will need it. So the good guys in New Orleans, many of them at least, won't want to leave.
The bad guys won't be leaving either. Where do they have to go? I cannot, offhand, think of any community anywhere which would welcome the armed bands of gangsters who now infest New Orleans.
In spite of the flooding and all the chaos, a few hundred or even a few thousand armed teenagers could survive in New Orleans indefinitely -- looting food from and staying in the thousands of intact houses and apartments like those of Interdictor's neighbourhood. When the police and everyone else is gone, they can loot the remaining drugstores and hospital pharmacies for any drugs they might want. And once the power and water are back on -- which they have to be, before rebuilding can occur -- why, then these guys are in clover. And they can, like the insurgents in Iraq, maintain their slacker's paradise by taking occasional potshots at any re-construction workers foolish enough to try to begin the reconstruction.
The National Guard and the army can waste a lot of manpower trying to clean out these people, likely with about the same degree of success as they have had cleaning insurgents out of Fallujah, driving them out of one area only to have them pop up somewhere else.
Its not a pleasant picture. Maybe if enough of the good guys stay, then the bad guys won't get such an upper hand.