Daniel Spisak on Technology

Ok people, here is the deal. The US government is/has been/and probably will continue to fuck up majorly in its handling of the New Orleans Hurricane Katrina disaster. It seems like every time I come online to get more news and updates I am hearing more and more first hand accounts of how FEMA or the National Guard has been preventing resuce teams from out of state helping.

Think about that last line for a few minutes. The whole world is watching America right now and we don’t have our shit together here people. This is BAD.

There has begun some great work by the Daily KOS people to build up a chronolgy of the Katrina relief efforts or prevention there of to try and get a clear pictures as to where and hopefully who is screwing things up. You can find their great chronolgy here:

http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Hurricane_Katrina_Chronology

Based on this chronolgy and based on other accounts I’ve been reading I find this op-ed piece that ran in the New York Times to be spot on, and I happen to agree with John Dvorak when he says the following lower paragraphs of the New York Times op-ed piece here I am about to show should have been the opening ones:

Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn’t know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center.

Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

It would be one thing if President Bush and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was shoe shopping at Ferragamo’s on Fifth Avenue and attended “Spamalot” before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make this administration implode.

Additionally, that op-ed piece from the New York Times is also being read by Germans in their popular Der Spiegel publication. Furthermore, its not just Maureen Dowd of the New York Times calling for Brown to be fired, but the editors of the paper at the New Orleans Times-Picayune in an open letter to President Bush:

We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, “What is not working, we’re going to make it right.”

Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.

Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.

How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks.

Despite the city’s multiple points of entry, our nation’s bureaucrats spent days after last week’s hurricane wringing their hands, lamenting the fact that they could neither rescue the city’s stranded victims nor bring them food, water and medical supplies.

Meanwhile there were journalists, including some who work for The Times-Picayune, going in and out of the city via the Crescent City Connection. On Thursday morning, that crew saw a caravan of 13 Wal-Mart tractor trailers headed into town to bring food, water and supplies to a dying city.

Television reporters were doing live reports from downtown New Orleans streets. Harry Connick Jr. brought in some aid Thursday, and his efforts were the focus of a “Today” show story Friday morning.

Yet, the people trained to protect our nation, the people whose job it is to quickly bring in aid were absent. Those who should have been deploying troops were singing a sad song about how our city was impossible to reach.

We’re angry, Mr. President, and we’ll be angry long after our beloved city and surrounding parishes have been pumped dry. Our people deserved rescuing. Many who could have been were not. That’s to the government’s shame.

Mayor Ray Nagin did the right thing Sunday when he allowed those with no other alternative to seek shelter from the storm inside the Louisiana Superdome. We still don’t know what the death toll is, but one thing is certain: Had the Superdome not been opened, the city’s death toll would have been higher. The toll may even have been exponentially higher.

It was clear to us by late morning Monday that many people inside the Superdome would not be returning home. It should have been clear to our government, Mr. President. So why weren’t they evacuated out of the city immediately? We learned seven years ago, when Hurricane Georges threatened, that the Dome isn’t suitable as a long-term shelter. So what did state and national officials think would happen to tens of thousands of people trapped inside with no air conditioning, overflowing toilets and dwindling amounts of food, water and other essentials?

State Rep. Karen Carter was right Friday when she said the city didn’t have but two urgent needs: “Buses! And gas!” Every official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency should be fired, Director Michael Brown especially.

In a nationally televised interview Thursday night, he said his agency hadn’t known until that day that thousands of storm victims were stranded at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center. He gave another nationally televised interview the next morning and said, “We’ve provided food to the people at the Convention Center so that they’ve gotten at least one, if not two meals, every single day.”

Lies don’t get more bald-faced than that, Mr. President.

Yet, when you met with Mr. Brown Friday morning, you told him, “You’re doing a heck of a job.”

That’s unbelievable.

There were thousands of people at the Convention Center because the riverfront is high ground. The fact that so many people had reached there on foot is proof that rescue vehicles could have gotten there, too.

We, who are from New Orleans, are no less American than those who live on the Great Plains or along the Atlantic Seaboard. We’re no less important than those from the Pacific Northwest or Appalachia. Our people deserved to be rescued.

No expense should have been spared. No excuses should have been voiced. Especially not one as preposterous as the claim that New Orleans couldn’t be reached.

Mr. President, we sincerely hope you fulfill your promise to make our beloved communities work right once again.

When you do, we will be the first to applaud.

Frankly, these people are pissed and I can’t say that I blame them one bit! Another group of people incensed about the governments show of inacation has been some of the press corps like Anderson Cooper from CNN who was interviewed on this weeks Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO. Bill spent much of this weeks show talking about Katrina and the problems with the “speedy” response for aid. I’ve included a link to download the entire show this time as I feel the whole show is worth listening to if you have the time:

Real Time w/Bill Maher 9-2-2005 (142MB Xvid AVI)

Additionally it looks like my predicition that the presidents approval rating would fall is coming true as we can see here: