by Last Night in Little Rock

It is reported on at least three websites, Time magazine, New Republic, and The News Blog that Federal Emergency Mismanagement Agency Director Micheal Brown padded his resume.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The lunatic fringe of all religions have stated that New Orleans is being punished for being "sin city"--Christians, the Christian Taliban, and Muslims alike. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell thankfully shut up. Remember their idiocies after 9/11, as recounted here?

by Last Night in Little Rock

Always a source of entertainment these days is a press briefing by Presidential Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Somebody at the White House dutifully transcribes these jewels for us. (The DoD website has proved to be fodder for Rumsfeldisms, which produced a good book and as shown here.)

Today's is no exception. Today's is priceless. It reminds me of the Cold War era films shown in school of what to do in a nuculer attack: "Duck and cover."

This is just too good. McClellan invokes the "blame game" defense and gets it shoved down his throat. Just about a fourth of it appears below, but the rest is on the link above.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times tomorrow has an article about the chaos in the legal system in NOLA, an issue that has been flying around the NACDL list serv since the storm. Criminal defense lawyers have been hearing these horror stories for over a week.

It compares the problems in NOLA today to the chaos after the Chicago Fire of 1871.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Administration's decision not to let the media have access to Hurricane Katrina photos of the dead. Vincent Carroll of the Rocky Mountain News took a swipe at TalkLeft for criticizing the decision.

Critics of the Federal Emergency Management Agency are shellacking it again for barring journalists from taking pictures of Hurricane Katrina's victims as bodies are pulled from receding waters.
"This is reminiscent of the policy against photographs of the flag-draped coffins of dead soldiers," declared the Denver-based TalkLeft blog in a typical complaint. "Anything that puts the government in a bad light becomes taboo."

posted by Last Night in Little Rock

This was written by Chris Rose of the Times-Picayune:

Dear America,

I suppose we should introduce ourselves: We're South Louisiana.

We have arrived on your doorstep on short notice and we apologize for that, but we never were much for waiting around for invitations. We're not much on formalities like that.

by TChris

Has spinmeister Rove saved the president's fanny again?

White House officials must be breathing a sigh of relief about the news coverage this morning that increasingly depicts the controversy over the government's response to the Gulf Coast disaster as a largely -- or even purely -- partisan issue.

Maybe not.

by Last Night in Little Rock

Twenty years ago last month, a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 crashed into a mountain and killed 520. Because of Japanese culture, without waiting for determining who was at fault, the President of Japan Airlines immediately made a point to personally visit with the survivors of all passengers that he could find and personally apologize. I remember the video of the man bowing to the person receiving him. Aside from disaster, the Japanese also apologize for inconveniencing someone else.

In times of great personal disgrace, Japanese culture also recognized "the fine art of seppuku," the ultimate in acceptance of personal responsibility.

We used to hear our government officials talk of that concept. Now, of course, they have spun it around to the "personal responsibility" of those who lacked the wherewithal to escape New Orleans instead of their own responsibility. Spin for the sake of saving face. No matter that they swept up with the poor the nursing home and hospital patients who had no ability to escape who died in their beds.

In American culture, a simple resignation for the good of the country or the President would be enough. But that requires class, style, a conscience, and a desire to do the right thing; something these people all lack.

We have a lot to learn from Japanese culture.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times today has a surreal article today about "post-apocalypse" New Orleans: Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street.

This is a view the talking heads on TV will never give us, with words with power.

by Last Night in Little Rock

This odd piece crossed my computer yesterday, and I didn't read it until today. It is from the website Intellectual Activist, and it posits that the "welfare state" is the cause of chaos in New Orleans.

People in disasters work together, fights and gunshots are proof the "welfare state" is a failure, NOLA is Baghdad under water, etc. It represents a similar thought pattern to those who believe that the people of NOLA deserve what they got if they didn't leave, neglecting to mention that 100,000 simply had no means to leave.

The author of the piece mentions "the projects" in Chicago that were "mercifully" torn down. He also admits that Fox News is his source of information.

Despite the false name of the website and the hidden agenda of potential racism, one might want to read it to think what the Bush apologists are thinking: The good citizens of New Orleans are reaping what the "welfare state" sowed.

And so it goes....

by TChris

Expect the White House to deflect any investigation that asks the questions posed today by Harry Reid:

In a letter to the Senate's Homeland Security Committee chairwoman, Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, pressed for a wide-ranging investigation and answers to several questions, including: "How much time did the president spend dealing with this emerging crisis while he was on vacation? Did the fact that he was outside of Washington, D.C., have any effect on the federal government's response?"

by TChris

The poor always suffer first, last, and most. As New Orleans degrades into a pool of toxicity, Prof. Hari Osofsky reminds us that the burdens of enviornmental disasters are borne disproportionately by the poor.

Hurricane Katrina's aftermath demonstrates this country's crisis of environmental justice. As the endless images cruelly reveal, the effects of this hurricane were not distributed randomly. Low-income people of color lived in more vulnerable situations and had fewer options.