The networks are now in full-on Geraldo mode, and I saw one guy on CNN bemoaning the fact that some people had to cut holes in normal chairs to use them as toilets over a bucket, and labeled it ‘extremely depressing.’ Fortunately, none of the military folks overheard him and shot him, because as anyone in the military knows, something like that would be great for your average grunt in the field. I won’t go into the gory details of the portable toilet we made from an ammo crate, a pair of old BDU bottoms, and some duct tape, but suffice it to say we strapped it to the back of my Abrams tank and used it, sans depression, for weeks at a time.
Soledad O’Brien appears to be attempting to foment a riot at Louis Armstrong airport- no one can get by her microphone without being asked, “Are you angry?” Apparently, what really bothers some people is that this disaster makes us look like a ‘third world nation,’ and that really upsets some reporters. I will join the rest of the world in giving those reporters the middle finger.
Of course they are angry. And tired. And upset. And despondent. And afraid. And hungry. And dirty. And in need of a shower. And so on and so on and so on. After all, they did just lose everything, their city is underwater, they don’t know what the future holds, etc. In other words, they just survived the biggest catastrophe our nation has ever seen.
I think there are legitimate criticisms that will later be investigated and should be examined, but right now it feels as if the media coverage is jumping the shark.
At any rate, while looking at all this mess, the logistics of this disaster are just mind-numbing. Just consider what is going on at thge shelter at the Astrodome, where 20,000 people are temporarily housed. They need 3 squares a day. They need sanitation. Clean underwear. Socks. Toothpaste. And the list of needs goes on and on and on.
And that doesn’t even take into account the other issues- the special medical consideration. These were predominantly poor people, who don;t often se a doctor, so not only will there be hurricane related injury illness, but identified pre-existing conditions, and the conditions people will have diagnosed that they may not even be aware of.
And the mental health issues. How many drug addicts, alcoholics, and substance abusers are in there? Not to mention the post-traumatic stress.
And other issues- how do you reunite all these people sent to different places all over the country?
At any rate, just keep giving.
DougJ
This article about Brown doesn’t inspire much confidence in FEMA
As I said, I fully expect Brown to be relieved of duty before January 1 (Christmas season is a traditional time for firings and resignations). But let’s not pretend the FEMA response hasn’t been poor. The president himself called it “not acceptable”.
Lis Riba
Have you heard, FEMA isn’t letting the Red Cross into New Orleans to help the hungry in the city!
Steve
You know… The complaints against politicizing this catastrophe pretty much became crying in the rain after about the 4th day when aid had not arrived.
I see the Republicans are trying their usual blame the victims approach… Accusing all these people of being at fault because they didn’t leave beforehand. You know, most of the people did, and such comments are frankly really unhelpful because they are complete 20/20 hindsight.
It’s just frankly disgusting.
But what we do know, is that our civil defense preparedness that we have tried to put in place over the past 50 years, has fallen completely, utterly, flat on it’s face.
The buck stops somewhere, and it ought to be with the leadership. I’m really fucking tired of this President putting all the blame on our soldiers and emergency aid workers. Shitting on the little guy isn’t leadership.
Lis Riba
Also, members of the military have been waiting for days to do airdrops of food and supplies but FEMA hasn’t approved those either (and I do think it’s reasonable of the military not to act without orders)
Likewise:
All these point to a failure in leadership.
Lis Riba
I see the Republicans are trying their usual blame the victims approach… Accusing all these people of being at fault because they didn’t leave beforehand. You know, most of the people did, and such comments are frankly really unhelpful because they are complete 20/20 hindsight.
Not only that, but where’s the logic in saying that private individuals should’ve had the foresight, but the government isn’t responsible for not planning ahead?
John Cole
Who is blaming victims? All I see from the left is blaming FEMA and Bush.
When the post-mortem on this is done, a lot of people are not going to like what they find out about why all those people were trapped in New Orleans.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
After reading the T-P’s special on the dangers the city faced and the Boston Herald’s investigation into how unqualified FEMA goofball Brown is suited for his job, and after watching Anderson Cooper and Shep Smith give voice to the voiceless, I have to say this is one of the media’s finer moments.
John, love your site and all, but out on the streets of America, people are horrified but what they’ve seen – and very few are coming to the federal government’s defense. Sure, the NO mayor and LA governor deserve some blame, but most people don’t know them. But they sure know Bush, and they’ve seen enough.
DougJ
Damn straight, I’m afraid. That’s something I still don’t understand — why weren’t Blanco and Nagin able to organize buses for those who couldn’t get out themselves.
I don’t get why John is so reluctant to blame FEMA though. They should have been on this 2 or 3 days ago. I’m not saying that’s the primary problem — the lack of evacuation was — but I’m starting to wonder if Michael Brown got John got a good deal on a horse when he was working his last job.
DougJ
Someone mentioned Shep Smith’s outstanding work. To all of you Fox-bashers out there, try watching some of his work the last week. You’ll see how wrong your ideas about Fox News are.
ppGaz
Can’t agree. First of all, there is plenty of blame to go around. Second, people complaining are not “from the left”. That’s just crap, John. Maybe you are sniffing around looking for material “from the left”, but in general, the average American is apalled at what is going on here, and it has not that much to do with “right” and “left” except in the self-absorbed blogosphere.
Maybe you need to get away from your Blogomatic Computerizer and go out and just talk to some real people down at the barber shop and the coffee shop?
I circulate among a rather mundane cross section of Americana …. I don’t know anybody who doesn’t think that the “operation” we are seeing on tv is not a collossal screwup.
Do you?
cd6
If you’re looking for people blaming the victims on the left, then you’re looking the wrong direction.
Here’s a post on RedState:
DougJ
Couldn’t agree more, ppgaz. They may be the first time I’ve ever said that.
Unless you consider Jonah Goldberg and Fox News to be on the left.
John Cole
Oh, well then. If a commenter at Red State said that, then clearly all Republicans are blaming the victims.
baggy
An NBC reporter (I don’t know who he was) was at the NO airport yesterday afternoon. He was called over by a very elderly man lying on the floor, who was confused about where he was and had no idea he was talking to a reporter. He asked him for some food and water. I don’t know who the reporter was but—with extreme gentleness—he gave the man a few sips of water and a bite of an MRE.
There is simply no way to have an “opinion” about the depth of suffering that is taking place.
DougJ
I think it is time to stop looking around the internet for something stupid some nobody on the other side of the politial aisle said about what’s going on in New Orleans. Of course, there’s someone saying this or that stupid thing, blaming the victims or comparing FEMA to the Gestapo (okay, I made that one up, but I’m sure there’s some lefty out there saying it).
So what? There’s a lot of agreement, too. Watch Fox News, then watch CNN and tell me you’re getting a different slant. Read Jonah Goldberg, then read atrios and tell me you’re getting a really different slant.
The country is in a lot more agreement than you would think if you just run around looking for crazy quotes.
cd6
Obiviously, I don’t want to imply it speaks for everyone, I had just it open in the other browser window and it made for a convienent cut and paste. However, while he doesn’t speak for everyone, he does speak for some
Gold Star for Robot Boy
John, that statement makes as much sense as:
neil
Michael Brown, FEMA director, has also been blaming the victims for not getting out when they were told to.q
neil
By the way.. Democratic stupidity? Aren’t you attacking the media, here, rather than any Democrats? And please don’t give me any liberal media shit, because the liberal media is currently censoring Kanye West and broadcasting Justice Sunday, so if they are really biased then they are even less effective than the Democrats.
DougJ
John, could you provide links for organizations that are helping unfairly maligned FEMA officials? You seem to think they’re the real victims in all this. Maybe Michael Brown needs a place to stay where he can hide from the media for a few weeks.
Trent
John,
When asked, “What can we do?” but a local radio show, the Mayor of New Orleans said, “Keep talking about it.”
It’s nice and clean to accuse the media of sensationalizing this event, but for once, i actually think they’re doing the country a service. This is a REAL tragedy, affecting more than a single brain-dead white woman, and it needs to be reported.
It is the one thing that they can do to help solve the problem since the feds are holding all the cards (Not letting the Red Cross into the city) and only public outrage will make them act.
Geoff
Well said. For the current Republicans in the administration and congressional leadership, it’s all about flaunting power and showing constant disrespect for anyone who isn’t 100% in obeisance. They are latter-day aristocrats. These people don’t know how to govern, or if any of them do, it is the least of their concerns. It’s all about domination and the connections and the accumulation and preservation of wealth. The non-rich are looked on with utter contempt, which is increasingly ill-disguised. I only hope this latest catastrophe starts to awaken more voters, and they begin to understand that keeping these thugs and their cronies in office can’t possibly serve the common good.
Mike S
Who jumped the shark, the media or the government? The media has been reporting the facts on the ground and the government seems to be on an entirely different planet. Check out this CNN article for just a few examples.
John Cole
Neil- Was supposed to be under Domestic Affairs. Fixed now. I don’t have a ‘Disaster’ category. If I did, I might have to file the entire comments section underneath that heading.
GoldStar-
Yeah, because one opinion carries the same degree of strength as the hundreds of thousands of blog posts blaming FEMA for ‘not doing enough’ without any idea of what they are actually doing.
There will be a time to crtique FEMA and everyone else, but right now, the hysterics are, well, hysterics.
Jeff Maier
John,
No false outrage, please. You’ve been known to cherry pick comments at DKos and other leftwing hangouts to serve as the basis for supporting a more sweeping generalization.
ppGaz
That depends on whether you think reporting a levee breach, widespread flooding, and tens of thousands of trapped and homeless people caught in a nightmare ….. LONG BEFORE THE ACTUAL EVENT HAPPENED…. is more “shark-jumping” than a government that says, AFTER the event, “we didn’t expect the breach of the levees.”
Actually, the mind just boggles here that all the authorities involved — local, state and federal — just completely blew this thing from the get-go. Just completely blew it. No excuses, no CYA, just a spade being called a spade. They blew it.
neil
By the way, this Kos diary looks pretty bad.
Northern Command Unit READY – BUT WAITED on Bush Orders
I think that means ‘waited on’ as in ‘waited for’, not ‘was ordered to wait.’ I hope so, anyway.
DougJ
It’s a pretty bad situation and you really can’t blame people for being hysterical.
Thanks for not letting people say Dear Leader all the time anymore, btw. That was pretty much ruining the entire comments section for anyone who isn’t a lunatic Bush-basher. You don’t see us on the conservative side writing Hitlery and so on, you’ll notice.
John Cole
I never cherry pick single comments, although I have linked to individual diaries which have hundreds of comments.
Trent
I can imagine the irritation over Dear Leader, but you HAVE to own up to the fact that the Right started that kind of moronic discourse. We’ve have to deal with it for years and years and it’s tedious.
To be fair, no one on the Right does it here.
btw – I can still make a post that our President has turned into Baghdad Bush, right? The guy was cheerily talking up the recovery yesterday while apparantly walking past corpses in the street.
I’ve seen coin operated fortune tellers on Coney Island that are more in touch with reality that him.
DougJ
Trent, I don’t know who started it, but you don’t see it from the right on this site. That seems like the major point.
Trent
I said that it doesn’t happen here.
And we do know who started it. Limbaugh started it a decade ago with “feminazis.”
Most recently, O’reilly, Malkin, Coulter and Carlson have taken up the flag with the name calling. (Hannity seems to stick with basic reprehensible lying and meanness.)
This is NOT one of those situations where “everyone does it, everyone shares responsibility.” No, this manner of discourse comes from the Right, always has.
You can’t expect some on the Left not to return it in kind.
jobiuspublius
But, john, this is part of the clusterfuck we are. This the best we are doing right now to inform the public about the enormity of the problem. It may not be perfect behavior, but, that mobilizes people and that’s neccessary. Turn on newtwork TV, i.e. the cheap stuff, the clown show will not stop.
Besides, I expect a coverup. It’s in the history books. Sen. Pat “Sticks to his word” Roberts, has forgotten to live up to his promise to continue investigating 9/11. I guess he’ll have an excuse now, ex post facto.
P.S. I glanced that the stadium is down to 5000 people. :)
jobiuspublius
And you think we like it now?
Steve
John writes: “Who is blaming victims?”
HAVE YOU BEEN LISTENING TO MICHAEL BROWN AND THE OTHER MORONIC APPOINTEES OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION? THEY’VE BEEN TRYING TO EXCUSE THEIR INCOMPTENCE BY CLAIMING THESE PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE ALL LEFT THE REGION BEFORE HAND.
DougJ writes: “You’ll see how wrong your ideas about Fox News are.”
No, my distaste for Fox was confirmed.
Shep Smith can’t spin the news, cause he’s down on the ground witnessing it. But the elitist stuffed shirts back home in Fox News land, like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly have been doing their damn best to spin this… claiming Shep was taking things out of perspective, and maybe he’s just too close to the situation and can’t see the big picture.
If you want a sample of Fox, and what’s wrong with the reality spinning stuffed shirts… Watch this bit with Geraldo and Shep on the ground, and Sean Hannity with his fluffed up hair do telling us how out of touch these guys are…
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/09/02.html#a4763
Steve
DougJ: “Trent, I don’t know who started it, but you don’t see it from the right on this site. That seems like the major point.”
I would like to point out that the category for this diary was “Democratic Stupidity” up until a few minutes ago when Cole changed it to “Domestic Affairs”.
Here’s John’s “Democratic Stupidity” category:
https://balloon-juice.com/?cat=9
This category is where John goes out on the internet, cherry picking quotes that he can trash on. I could find no “Republican Stupidity” with examples like Pat Robertson, GW Bush and others…
jobiuspublius
You actually want us to ignore FOX’s history and waste time with it when we can get what we want somewhere else? Besides, they’re probably just sniffing the wind.
Ancient Purple
I don’t think people – by and large – are hyterical. I think people are frustrated and angry.
How can you not be when you see people stranded for four days without any response from the federal government. One can only imagine the stench and filth these people had to live in, not to mention the amount of time it will take for them to heal physically and mentally.
And before anyone starts up on the line about how the local government is at fault, here’s a little chestnut from our friends at the Department of Homeland Security:
(Note: the publishing date of that page was 1/6/05.)
Sorry, but when you take ownership of something and claim that you are primarily responsible, then you take the hits when it falls apart.
Trent
Why didn’t they organize the buses???
Ok, explain to me how they would organize that in 36, 48 hours? Rationally, paint the picture with numbers and logistics to do that. Because it’s SUCH A CANARD!
50,000 people (A VERY conservative estimate)
50 people per bus
1,000 buses.
Where are you going to load them?
How many pickup points does there need to be?
How do you know how many buses to put in each pickup point?
How many people does it take to organize these pickup points?
Who’s going to drive the buses?
How many people does it take to assist the elderly and sick?
How many people does it take to get the word out?
Where are you going to take them?
Now, after you’ve thought about all of that, and spit out, “The police of course!” think about all the other things that they need to be doing. Keeping order, assisting with the traffic problems inherent in the evacuation plan. Doing what they can to plan for the possibility of a levee break.
I don’t think it’s even physically possible. Sure, a best effort could have been made. But it would not have prevented the situation that we’re in now. We would still have had thousands and thousands of people stranded in the city.
Does Nagin deserve criticism for this lack of planning? Sure, some. Then again, he’s just the mayor of a very poor city, elected in 2002. I think the long standing police department is more culpible. I think the more capable state government also should have picked up the slack. And what about the new DHS that has received billions of dollars to deal with these things?
Keep in mind, the police in a city like New Orleans aren’t even in the minor leagues. (Aside from the fact that they specifically are probably the most corrupt polic organization in the country.) They are not the NYPD nor can you expect them to be.
The feds are the pros. They are the Forsbergs and Lemieuxs and Haseks and Belfours. (Only sport i know…) They are the ones who are EXPECTED to have their shit together.
And that’s what it comes down to: The argument over whether or not we are in it alone or whether we’re going to help each other out. Does the feds have the state’s back who has the local’s back? Or is this truly the ownership society where it’s one for one and all for none?
We are all Americans. We are all connected. This disaster touches every state and every city, from the tourists who are trapped there to the expats who lived there to the companies who do business there to the people with friends there.
And as i fear, to the economy that the region is a part of.
It’s time to rethink the way Americans (especially conservative Americans) view their place in the world and in their country.
Trent
I got no problem with that, to be honest. It’s not on the same child-like, name calling level.
You can call someone stupid. It’s when you make up phrases like “The Autistic Republicans” that it’s over the line.
But i’m lobbying for Baghdad Bush to be allowed!
jobiuspublius
This court is adjorned. :)
jobiuspublius
Well said Trent.
Davebo
“There will be a time to crtique FEMA and everyone else”
And I’m sure you’re thinking around 2012 would be good.
The rest of the country has taken the bags off their heads already.
DougJ
I was gone for a while observing a moment of silence for Michael Brown and the other FEMA officials who have taken so much unfair abuse. I assume John has done the same by now.
jobiuspublius
ROFLMAO Who in their right mind during a grim and desparate situation delegates authority to somebody and then calls them Brownie in public?
Steve
Trent – To paraphrase an old computer salesman joke…
You know what the difference between Baghdad Bob and Baghdad Bush is?
Baghdad Bob knew when he was lying.
StupidityRules
For instance Condi Rice who went on a three day holiday in New York after the huricane struck should recieve critique right away. And after people were made aware of her holiday she went back to work and started cordinating help from abroad. I wonder if she would have done that without the shit storm she received?
Eural
On a related note – where is Cheney? The worst disaster – even bigger than 9/11 according to Bush – and the most powerful VP in this century is AWOL?
StupidityRules
Eural, according to his spokeswoman, he’s back in Washington DC. But I have yet to read about anyone actually seeing him there. Anyone got any real info?
jobiuspublius
He’s probably in a bunker somewhere pollishing his swastika.