- For those looking for alternative coverage, the BBC is keeping a blog. Horrible first-hand reports of people left to die in rest homes and a man outside the Superdome screaming, “This is America, why are we in this situation?”
- A lot of them are gone now, but new ones continue to crop up. People are posting sex-for-shelter ads (“Women with large breasts only,” “Must be self-starter,” “Send photos first.”) on the New Orleans Craig’s List site. MeFi thread. Interestingly, there seems to be a double standard for women posting similar messages.
- Storm chasers catch video of Katrina.
- Craig Giesecke isn’t too impressed by FEMA.
- Daily Kos: “This is not politics. This is not partisanship. This is unforgivable.”
- Images from Plaquemines Parish.
- Hastert: “It looks like that place could be bulldozed.” Electric Mist ain’t happy.
- Fats Domino found.
- Bush cuts delayed flood control work. (Source: Reuters)
- Oliver Willis has video inside the Convention Center: Dead babies, people without food or support for four days, all doing what they were asked.
Katrina Headlines XXVI
– September 2, 2005Posted in: Katrina
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Well, now that we have a real disaster on our hands it’s become painfully obvious what these morons have done to our country. Of course, if you wanted to see the warning signs of the decay that Bush has wrought, they were there to be seen, but this hurricane has made it so that only the willfully blind can miss it now.
This is what happens when you elect a bunch of people whose common belief is that there can never be too little government.
Yeah,amen to what Scott said
Without a duobt, Bush is the most vile President this country has ever had.
Herbert Hoover’s inhuman cluelessness about the Depression was previously the high watermark of presidential disgrace. But I think that Bush’s actions represent the new cesspool. History will not be kind to Bush’s behavior. Where Hoover’s fiasco involved poverty and jobs and lives forever grinded into the nose of an economic clusterfuck, he did not willingly allow people to die like this. Here, we have lives being lost, babies dying, children getting raped, a populace doing exactly what they have been asked to do being left without food, water, rescue and support — except, of course, by the generosity of individuals and corporations. And an utter refusal to accept outside aid, because this motherfucker is a cowboy who can never be wrong.
If that isn’t a crime or a midemeanor under the U.S. Constitution, I don’t know what is. In a just world, such rampant irresponsibility would call for an impeachment hearing. But that will not happen. Bush, Cheney, Rove and Rice — all of whom have never known a life without a hot meal — will all come out of this unscathed. Unless of course this is the tipping ponit that gets the nation to wake up.