Posts from — September 2005

The White House responds:

Dana Perino, White House deputy press secretary, said in response to Reid’s remarks that Roberts was “clearly qualified in terms of intellect, ethics and temperament, and it would be unfortunate if some in the Senate use his confirmation to seek to change the historic approach to Supreme Court confirmations.”

Apparently no one in this White House can remember what “advice and consent” means. The Republicans have totally changed the procedure for handling nominations of all kinds and have politicized the process. The historic approach was to consult with the Senate before making nominations, and to release documents 12 years after a President left office.

The barrier islands and wetlands have to be replenished or the area will take a bigger hit the next time a hurricane hits. These features act as natural seawalls against the storm surge. If they aren’t re-established the same storm surge that Katrina generated will come on shore with even more force.

The storm surge from Lake Pontchartrain, whipped up by Katrina, put a neighbor’s hot tub and boat in Warren Willoz’s back yard. He hopes his $150,000 flood policy covers the damage done to his $275,000 house. But already there are issues.

“They said they’ll only cover the bottom cabinets but not the top,” says Willoz, “because the water didn’t get up high enough to damage the top.”

Flood insurance is a government program, because the private sector refuses to offer the protection. Corporations, which the Founding Fathers suspected of being criminal enterprises, are predicated on reducing risks. Today insurance companies don’t want to insure anyone who might file a claim. The government is stuck picking up the slack, because the corporate private sector doesn’t want to work for its money.

It seems like they forget that Shrubbery blamed every that has gone wrong on the Clinton administration, or that Reagan and Bush the Elder were constantly kvetching about what Clinton was doing.

This is the same as when they claimed that only supporters of the enemy complained about American policy when there were troops in danger. Many of those making the claim are on record complaining almost daily during the Bosnia and Kosovo campaigns. A few of them were repeating Milosovic talking points as Serbian forces were shooting at American aircraft.

IOKIYAR

On Wednesday, the coast guard ship was told not to unload all of its relief supplies when it was in Pensacola, since some of the items such as tents were no longer required.

Somehow I think that people in small towns in Mississippi and Louisiana would be prepared to argue that large tents are very much needed where they are, because they have no confidence anything else will be provided for them.

By now you’ve read that the FDA has declared that German and British military rations are “unfit for human consumption” and will be burned. As anyone who has ever eaten MREs will tell you there are no military rations fit for human consumption, but you eat them anyway because they will keep you alive. They are a damn sight better than FEMA promises.

No agency that permits the sale of Chicken McNuggets has the right to look down its nose at “creamed braunschweiger on toast” or “bangers with mashed peas”.

As my Mother used to tell me: “You eat those cookies and tell your Grandmother how much you love them! She thinks you like them, so she bakes them, and you will love them!” Society doesn’t always make sense, but it works.

When Katrina came ashore there were hurricane force winds all the way to the Alabama-Florida border and tropical storm force winds east to Panama City, Florida. A tornado may only be a block wide, but hurricanes are corridors of destruction hundreds of miles wide.

If Rita hits Lake Charles, Louisiana, Houston to New Orleans have a problem.

Right now it looks like Northstar of The People’s Republic of Seabrook picked the right time to visit Virginia and Steve Bates of The Yellow Doggerel Democrat is breathing a little easier.

I’m reaching an age when I will evacuate because I’m getting really tired of dealing with the mess.

If we run through Stan, Tammy, Vince, and Wilma, they will designate the storms with the Greek alphabet. I have a problem with filing a damage claim base on being hit by a Beta hurricane. The IT and Sci-Fi jokes would be too much.

A 10 by 28 foot building originally used as a tool shed has sold in Dublin, Ireland for three-eights of a million dollars. There’s no yard, no famous crime was committed there, nothing of note was created there, no one famous slept there, and it’s worth $350,000!?

Let’s see: Brown-drown, shoes-blues, guitar-Qatar, later-‘gator…

Some good news heard on this week’s This American Life, a lady survived in her flooded house by resting atop her Stearns & Foster queen-sized mattress for most of week. I’ve never considered use as a floatation device when buying a mattress before.

The South Florida Sun Sentinel was irritated when they discovered that people who weren’t within 100 miles of a hurricane had gotten FEMA checks before the election last year. So they have looked the agency’s record and today is the first of a two-part series: FEMA: A Legacy of Waste.

People who need help can’t get it, but other people are making out like bandits.

[Update 9/19: Part II now available.]

Steve over at No More Mr. Nice Blog looks at a Richard Brookhiser column in the New York Observer and generally agrees that no one would have complained about the Marines or Army being sent in immediately to maintain order until help arrived.

In an oil dependent world Australia hosts a great event: World Solar Challenge, a race from Darwin to Adelaide in solar-powered cars. With a straight-line distance of over 1600 miles, or about the same distance as from New Orleans to San Diego, it is a major test of solar technology.
The race starts next weekend.

On Friday’s show · Sept. 16, 2005, Fresh Air from WHYY presented an interview with historian and author Douglas Brinkley who teaches at Tulane University and was displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

He has since returned to New Orleans begun gathering oral histories — he hopes to collect as many as 20,000 — for a book, tentatively titled The Great Deluge.

He doesn’t want the truth of what happened forgotten. He is concerned that if the situation isn’t immediately documented there will be an effort to “forget” what really happened.

He stayed in New Orleans during the hurricane, then evacuated his family and returned, so he knew the conditions regarding access to the city and some of the efforts to block assistance reaching those who couldn’t leave.

USS Bataan [LHD-5]

As hurricane Katrina moved up the Gulf taking aim at New Orleans, Captain Nora Tyson and the crew of the USS Bataan were right behind it.

By coincidence this vessel, based in Norfolk, Virginia, was operating in the Gulf. Jo Fish might know of another class of US vessel that was better, but I can’t imagine anything more suited to aiding coastal cities.

The Bataan is a multipurpose amphibious assault ship. She was designed to support landing Marines on a shore. She has a flight deck for her helicopters and VTOL aircraft, she has amphibious landing craft, she has a 600-bed hospital, and she can generate 100,000 gallons of drinking water a day. Everything that was needed was there: food, water, medical care, transportation, communications, mobile generators, everything was on that ship and it arrived within range as Katrina hit New Orleans.

Northern Command, the area command for US operations, was ready to go. They put people on alert to leap into action. All they needed was the word from the President.

The helicopters from the Bataan rushed in with Coast Guard helicopters on search and rescue [SAR] missions, but no one was transferred to the hospital and none of her supplies was used in New Orleans.

At some point, someone in FEMA made the decision that the way to deal with New Orleans was to evacuate the city, so there was no need for supplies in the city. Not being clear on geography, that “no aid” decision was apparently applied to all of the parishes around New Orleans.

The Bataan was later shifted East and helped support operations on the Mississippi coast, but she could have held the patients from all of the hospitals and nursing homes in the area. She could have supplied water to the people of New Orleans and a lot of food. She could have saved a lot more people if she had been allowed to do what she was capable of doing.

I hope that the Navy and DoD are generous with awards for the vessel and her crew. They did their duty and would have done a lot more if they had been allowed.

IT IS HIS JOB! HE GETS PAID TO DEAL WITH THESE PROBLEMS! HE APPOINTED THE PEOPLE WHO WERE UNABLE TO DO THEIR JOB!

He is wasting money flying around the country staging photo ops while he should be in Washington getting things done. If he spent some time in the office, he might find out what was going on, and that goes for his entire administration. If his people can light Jackson Square in a few hours for a photo op, why didn’t they have lights in the SuperDome for days? Are those generators and the fuel to run them only available for photo ops?

He failed to call in the military. The military wasn’t used because of George W. Bush, not the laws.

Bush has maxed out his credit account. A minimal payment after years of abusing that account, doesn’t cut it. People raised his credit limit after September 11^th, but he has been wasting it.

People died.

[John Travolta is more important than an Australian Consul General according to the Red Cross?]

If you go back to the records of hurricane Camille in 1969 you will find that it was a more powerful storm and made a more direct hit on New Orleans than Katrina. Camille didn’t flood the city, like Katrina did, because it moved at an angle, west of north, and moved over the city. That meant it was pushing the water of Lake Pontchartrain away from the city.

Katrina came in traveling due north and passed to the east of the city. After the eye was northeast of the city, its winds were pushing the water of the Lake back into the city, which caused the levees to break. The path of Katrina also caused the more massive surge on the Mississippi coast and higher winds in Mississippi than Camille, because of the track it followed.

…It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces, the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment’s notice.

The authority was there, based on a declaration of emergency, all that was needed was someone to say GO!. That was his job, and he didn’t do it. His Dad did it. The Big Dog did it. But Karl forgot to tell the Shrubbery to order the military to assist.

The air-conditioned tents, “water buffalo” tankers, bridges, amphibious vehicles, field hospitals, field kitchens, dozens of aircraft types: all available, and all unused because the President didn’t issue an order.

The real restriction on the use of the military in the US is law enforcement, and that restriction doesn’t apply to the National Guard or the Coast Guard. There were more than enough law enforcement officers available, but they needed communications, vehicles, and other equipment that was under water.

If there had been food, water, portable toilets, and transportation out of the flooded area, the looting and civil disorder would never have gotten as bad as it did.