CELINE DION MELTS DOWN

Just watch. She justifies the looting in New Orleans yet weepily wonders why the people who were stuck there weren't being rescued faster.

Of course, they weren't being rescued because of the looting.

(thanks to bWb)

MECCA, WE HAVE A PROBLEM

Scroll down for the latest sequel to Flight 93: Embrace of the Serp... -- I mean updates to our "Crescent of Embrace" post. Is it really a coincidence that it points to Mecca?

Then check out the latest updates and animated gif here.

From Captain Ed:

Yesterday's post on this subject generated a heated debate on the nature of the memorial, with a few defenders pointing out the generic shape of the crescent and arguing that its inclusion in the design has no ill intent, and that therefore any objections to it relegate us to lunacy. In response (and I posted this as a comment in the thread), allow me to offer a proposal for a World War II memorial in Pearl Harbor, something new and modern that can be located near the USS Arizona, and see if everyone likes it. Perhaps it could even be a mosaic or a mural on the side of the Arizona Memorial, as an addition.

I think it should symbolize the re-emergence of the US in the Pacific after the devastating attack on our fleet at Pearl. It should represent the national effort to come out of the East to reclaim our position and to establish a beacon of freedom and prosperity.

A rising sun would perfectly symbolize that.

It should also represent how we used thatas a launching point to liberate the many islands in the East Pacific that suffered under the brutal Japanese occupation. Several sunrays could symbolize our efforts across the vast ocean to bring freedom to the oppressed in faraway lands.

And since our national colors are red, white, and blue, I would design it as a red sun on a field of white, emerging over a blue ocean. Now, you may not see much of the blue because of the sea line on the memorial, but the idea would be to have the sun rise above the sea line on the Arizona memorial anyway.

Wouldn't that be a great way to memorialize those who died in a heroic battle for their country?

Oh, wait -- the "wingnuts" are claiming that the Rising Sun looks almost exactly like the battleflag of imperial Japan, the very nation that attacked Pearl Harbor! How silly of the "wingnuts"! Why, the sun belongs to everyone! And it even appears on a state flag -- Arizona's!

Had someone trotted out this idea in 1946, they'd be lucky to ever find work in the US again. It's a measure of the intellectual erosion of the Left that this kind of thinking gets celebrated and defended today.

Heh. Indeed.

MORE: The crescent as seen from the Strata-Sphere:

One final word on this for today. We need to ignore the elitists and the fantasy world that we hear them expouse. They are simply apologists who cannot understand why this is offensive and dangerous. ...

I do not care whether they get it or not. I know what Al Qaeda will do with this. They will say it is a sign that fanatical Islam will win. They will say Allah placed his sign over those of the dead Americans who fought back as symbol of victory. They will use it to rally the forces of Jihad. They will use this as a rallying point against us.

They will take a memorial that was supposed to honor our dead heroes and use it in such a manner that will mean we probably will have many more memorials to build in the future.

MORE:From A.M. Siriano

So is all this much ado about nothing, a mere coincidence?

If you believe that, then you don’t understand the nature of artists, which is what architects are. (Try to debate with them that they are not; you will get an earful.)

A couple of years ago I worked with another type of artist, a graphic designer, whose team was hired to design a website for a logistics firm. The president of the firm expressly wanted his site to convey a spirit of reliability. “When you go to this site,” he told them, “you should think reliability, integrity, a solid company that you can trust.” The team returned a week later with three or four variations for the homepage, and I noticed that one design included an Oriental-style tree. Somewhat familiar with symbols, I asked about it. How surprised I was to hear one of the designers, a young lady, sheepishly say, “Well, that’s based on an old Buddhist symbol for reliability.” (The president, an ex-Marine, stared at her as if she had grown that tree out of the end of her nose.)

Architects—good ones like Paul Murdoch and his design crew—are fully aware of the symbolism that they put into their work. The first order of business is to make money, of course, which is why their design incorporates various half-religious notions of sacredness and healing, which appeal to people’s sentimentalism. But no one can tell me that it never crossed their minds that the Crescent is the symbol of Islam, just as the Cross is the symbol of Christianity. (Neither started out that way: the Crescent was originally a pagan symbol, and the Cross was a favorite torture device of the Romans.) ...

The presence of “minaret” in the Memorial design is barely apparent, but only because, living in a non-Islamic nation, we have no need to take note of its function: it is used by the muezzin (crier) to call the faithful to turn toward Mecca and pray. The minaret, five times a day, literally becomes a “tower of voices.” Is connecting the Flight 93 Memorial tower to an Islamic minaret a stretch? Not with the Crescent symbol in proximity.

Also, few are mentioning how the key focal point of the "sacred ground" is positioned exactly where the star is supposed to be in relation to the crescent. The whole thing clearly appears to be a semi-abstract version of a "peaceful" Islamic shrine embracing the dead. I thought I was going out on a limb with my initial impression, but it's held up quite nicely.

In the context of a Flight 93 Memorial though, Islam certainly does not mean peace. The true definition of submission rises to the fore. This was the fundamental mistake of the architects who almost certainly would have gone with a new-age or buddhist influenced shrine in most other cases. You only have so many choices for representing sacredness and spirituality once you eliminate Christianity. They chose Islam. They chose to represent submission.

MORE ON MECCA: From Politicalities:

I've always been one to go for cold calculations over pretty pictures, so I set to find out if indeed the crescent points towards Mecca. Here's what I came up with:

According to this site, the latitude/longitude coordinates of Mecca are 21.4234, 39.8262 and the coordinates of the Flight 93 crash site are 40.052, -78.8963. Using the calculator from this site, I determined that the azimuth between the two points is 124.80°.

Next I went to the Flight 93 National Memorial website and found the biggest overhead view of the memorial I could find with north oriented up. I measured the distance from tip-to-tip of the crescent and came up with 64px east-west and 90px north-south. The arctangent of 64/90 is the angle between north and a line drawn between the tips, which works out to 35.42°. Adding 90° to this angle gives the direction the crescent faces as 125.42°.

Conclusion: the crescent points towards Mecca with an error of 0.62°, or 0.17%. If you take a circle and divide its circumference into 580 equal arcs, the angle subtended by one of those arcs is the error. (Bear in mind that any error in my figures could change this value; the figure most open to interpretation is the distance in pixels between the tips of the crescent.)

I'm guessing the architects probably nailed it dead on and that the tiny margin of error comes from using an image smaller than the original blueprints.

UPDATE: Belmont Club checks the math:

I went to two sites to independently calculate the bearing from the Flight 93 crash site to Mecca. You can go to the Marine Great Circle Calculator or WhereAreWe?. Both these sites accept the coordinates of points A and B and calculate the true bearing to get from A to B. Both give a result of 55 degrees true, or its reciprocal 235. I can tell you that my jaw fell open. The bearing given by both Great Circle Calculators corresponded near enough to the measured opening of the Crescent from the PDF map. (The reader should do this for himself).

Now it could have been coincidence. ... If you look at the video provided, you'll see that the orientation of the "Crescent of Embrace" is determined, or at least very strongly suggested by the contours of the ground. ...

But what a coincidence! Memorials are symbols above all and it may be inappropriate to commemorate Flight 93 with a Red Crescent facing Mecca.

LAWLESSNESS KILLS

More evidence that encouraging the looting early on after hurricane Katrina cost many innocent people their lives, in the New York Times:

As early as Friday, Aug. 26, as Katrina moved across the Gulf of Mexico, officials in the watch center at FEMA headquarters in Washington discussed the need for buses.

That's in DC, a couple of days before the storm.

Someone said, "We should be getting buses and getting people out of there," recalled Leo V. Bosner, an emergency management specialist with 26 years at FEMA and president of an employees' union. Others nodded in agreement, he said.

"We could all see it coming, like a guided missile," Mr. Bosner said of the storm. "We, as staff members at the agency, felt helpless. We knew that major steps needed to be taken fast, but, for whatever reasons, they were not taken."

Drivers Afraid

When the water rose, the state began scrambling to find buses. Officials pleaded with various parishes across the state for school buses. But by Tuesday, Aug. 30, as news reports of looting and violence appeared, local officials began resisting.

Governor Blanco said the bus drivers, many of them women, "got afraid to drive. So then we looked for somebody of authority to drive the school buses."

"Somebody of authority to drive...?" Is that a hint that lawyers were still putting liability ahead of lifesaving? Sounds like it might be.

Had widespread lawlessness not been an issue so early after the storm (looters reportedly hit the streets before they were even flooded, thanks to Blanco's a Nagin's lax attitude), they might have had enough drivers from surrounding parishes to move all those buses into action before they were all flooded. But the lawlessness understandably frightened drivers away. Would you want to drive a big, slow bus into what amounted to a war zone unarmed?

Perhaps FEMA in DC should have gotten on the phone to someone in Mayor Nagin's office on Aug. 26 and asked them about their evacuation plans, but that isn't FEMA's job. It probably will be eventually. One thing I see coming out of this is a FEMA that will require states and cities to draw up detailed disaster plans and file them with FEMA HQ. Currently, FEMA wants such plans but the filing requirements are very loose.

And cities and states will still have to follow those plans.

One thing is curious about this NYT story, btw. It never mentions the hundreds of buses scattered all around New Orleans and how using them before the storm might have made the whole situation different. Those buses don't even rate a throwaway line.

MORE: The Captain blasts the NYT for failing to mention the nearly 600 buses NOLA officials had at their disposal but failed to use. It is more than passing strange that in a story that uses the word "buses" 18 times, the Times never mentions the most famous buses in the United States. As usual, when there's a fact that may harm Democrats, NYT readers are the last to know it.

(thanks to Chris)

SHOULD MICHAEL BROWN BE DRAWN AND QUARTERED OR MERELY FIRED?

That seems to be the debate around the blogosphere these days. I've got to side with Jeff Goldstein on this. Brown said some horrendous and clueless things in the early days after Katrina, and that alone made him a political liability. But I find it fascinating that Brown's FEMA has handled four hurricanes before Katrina without much of a hitch, and is handling Katrina well in Florida, Alabama and Mississippi right now, yet it's the catastrophe in Louisiana that gets all the press and has him on the ropes.

If we were to look at this scientifically, we might note that one element among the states mentioned is not like the others. If we were to look at this logically, we might conclude that the one thing that's not like the others is likely to be the souce of the problems. But I guess science and logic have no utility anymore when there are points to be scored.

Here are the facts: Florida, Alabama and Mississippi all have GOP governors who took charge of the relief situation, didn't dither or dish out conflicting information up and down the chain of command and haven't surrounded themselves with lawyers and high-paid political advisors. Those governors made good decisions and stuck with them. They knew what FEMA would and would not do based on history and regulation. Louisiana, on the other hand, has a weepy, indecisive Democrat governor who seems to have considerable trouble deciding whether to shoot looters or hug them. She clearly doesn't understand her own role in disasters, doesn't understand FEMA's role, and doesn't understand what local officials are supposed to do either. So she has performed miserably, and seems to be far more concerned about politics than just doing her job. James Lee Wiit, FEMA director under President Clinton, is nothing less than a living flack jacket for Gov. Blanco.

I really don't see how firing Michael Brown fixes any of this. But I do see how recalling Gov. Blanco fixes pretty much all of it.

PADILLA TO STAY IN THE BRIG

Good. A win for us on the war, a loss for terrorists and the ACLU that defends them.

A federal appeals court Friday sided with the Bush administration and reversed a judge's order that the government charge or free "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the president has the authority to detain a U.S. citizen closely associated with al Qaida.

Of course he does. Congress explicitly gave him that authority shortly after 9-11.

RASICM OR RIPPLE EFFECT FROM LOOTING?

I don't know. Just asking. Here's the story:

Police from surrounding jurisdictions shut down several access points to one of the only ways out of New Orleans last week, effectively trapping victims of Hurricane Katrina in the flooded and devastated city. . . .

"We shut down the bridge," Arthur Lawson, chief of the City of Gretna Police Department, confirmed to United Press International, adding that his jurisdiction had been "a closed and secure location" since before the storm hit.

"All our people had evacuated and we locked the city down," he said. The bridge in question -- the Crescent City Connection -- is the major artery heading west out of New Orleans across the Mississippi River.

Lawson said that once the storm itself had passed Monday, police from Gretna City, Jefferson Parrish and the Louisiana State Crescent City Connection Police Department closed to foot traffic the three access points to the bridge closest to the West Bank of the river.

He added that the small town, which he called "a bedroom community" for the city of New Orleans, would have been overwhelmed by the influx.

"There was no food, water or shelter" in Gretna City, Lawson said. "We did not have the wherewithal to deal with these people."

"If we had opened the bridge, our city would have looked like New Orleans does now: looted, burned and pillaged."

But -- in an example of the chaos that continued to beset survivors of the storm long after it had passed -- even as Lawson's men were closing the bridge, authorities in New Orleans were telling people that it was only way out of the city.

Yes, police from surrounding jurisdictions were trapping victims in New Orleans. And once again, city leadership was giving its citizens bad information that endangered them. But the police from the outlying jurisdictions were also containing the lawlessness that had broken out, preventing it from spreading to their towns. That seems to be the intent stated in the quote above, and how were those officers to know who did and didn't pose a threat? The looters weren't wearing Cafe Press T-shirts with "LOOTERS" stencilled in big letters on the front. If containing the looting and mayhem was what those officers were doing, it's hardly "an absolute disgrace." I guess it's easier to accuse police who might have been doing their duty as they saw it to their own towns than it is to accuse fellow lawyers who are demonstrably helping al Qaeda terrorists, but we won't go there. Many will no doubt see racism in this, and DoJ should look into the possibility, but we may be seeing yet another side effect of allowing the looting to run amock. I wouldn't be so quick on the accusation trigger. It just looks like irresponsible piling on at this point.

Lawlessness hurts everyone, and the innocent who happen to be in its path are obviously the ones most hurt. Allowing the looting to get out of hand hurt everyone. Allowing it to spread outside of New Orleans, which was a real possibility, would have been a truly dangerous and dumb thing to do. Containing it, if that's what those police departments were doing, was hardly a crime.

(thanks to Chris)

JIMMY CARTER TO HEAD UP N.O. REBUILD?

Tim Roemer can't be serious.

This morning on Fox's "Fox and Friends," former Indiana Democrat congressman and 9/11 commissioner Tim Roemer called on President Bush to name former President Jimmy Carter to the head of efforts to rebuild New Orleans.

Roemer told the stunned hosts: "The second thing we should do is put somebody like former President Jimmy Carter in charge of rebuilding New Orleans."

Well, Carter might be handy if any killer swamp rabbits show up.

YELLOW SUBMARINES UPDATE

National Review's next cover features the buses of New Orleans.

I think it's fair to say that we're now past the stage where we need to keep looking for more buses in satellite photos of New Orleans. That point has been made. But we're nowhere near the point where the story has reached sufficient play in the national media. Fox has covered it, but to my knowledge CNN hasn't. Neither have most major dailies.

If you're still interested in getting the bus story into the national discussion about what happened in New Orleans, try and prod your local paper and TV stations to cover it. The original photo is an AP shot, so they will be able to get it easily enough. The story is easy enough to tell with a bit of research and it's visually arresting. There were buses, they were supposed to be used to evacuate those who lacked personal transportation, but they weren't used. People died needlessly. The NO and LA evacuation plans were underwhelming in their seriousness, and the indecision on the part of Gov. Blanco and the meltdown of the NOPD and Mayor Nagin during the unfolding crisis contributed mightily to the death and suffering in New Orleans. And people died needlessly.

That's the basic storyline. If you can get your local paper and/or TV station to cover it, you'll be doing the nation some good.

NOT ONE DIME

for the "Crescent of Embrace." The heroes of Flight 93 deserve a memorial. That memorial should not be shaped around the most promiment symbol of their murderers.

What next--a holocaust memorial in the shape of a swastika?

UPDATE: Great line Bryan. That said it all. But just in case people still don't get it, let me add this:

The large scale of the design allowed the architect to try to get away with it on a subconscious level. He knew Americans wouldn't accept an "Islam is peace" Flight 93 memorial if they knew that's what it was. People who were voting on the original detailed design drawings(.pdf file) probably didn't even notice it. It's meant to be seen and admired from high above on a plane, or from Paradise, if you know what I mean. At least in spirit, it's probably designed to be an American mini-Mecca. It tricks you into the “loving” embrace of Islam rather than telling the visitor up front what it is. And lastly, it reminds me of George Harrison’s clever song My Sweet Lord:

My sweet lord (hallelujah)
My, my, lord (hallelujah)
Hm, my lord (hare krishna)
My, my, my lord (hare krishna)
Oh hm, my sweet lord (krishna, krishna)

Chris R. (Changed to mini-Mecca because I like the sound of it then added a bit more. That's my artistic interpretation and I'm sticking to it.)

MORE: Two good comments on Captain's Quarters:

This was not mere ham-fistedness. There is no group more attuned to symbolism and the "meaning" of structures than architects. It is their business to take drawings and, ultimately, wood, glass, and stone, and create meaning out of it. That this design is in some way accidental or coincidental is preposterous.
Posted by: rich

I want a big monument. One with the likeness of those who fought back, standing tall, facing the hijackers with anything they could find that could cause some harm to the hijackers... standing firm, and fighting back. At the base of the monument, all of the names of those in that flight should be inscribed, with an inscription at the top of the base: Todd Beamer's Battle Cry, "Let's Roll!"
Posted by: newton

And it turns out the jury did have a problem with the name being too religious and they asked that it be changed. To bad they didn't grasp that the entire project was worse than the name. Changing the name wouldn't have fooled anyone, which is probably why it wasn't changed.

Murdoch, however, said his crescent has no religious significance, but was created to add formality to the bowl-shaped valley surrounding the crash site.

"This is not about any religion per se," Murdoch said in a telephone interview with the Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown. "It's a spiritual space, and a sacred place, but it's open to anyone."

The word "crescent," he said, was used as a generic architectural term for a curved line.

"Sure, there is an Islamic crescent," Murdoch said. "Theirs is a lunar crescent. Ours isn't based on that."

The jury that recommended the final design, approved by the Flight 93 Advisory Commission, had suggested in a report that planners rethink use of the word "crescent" and, instead, use "circle," "arc" or other words not linked to religious icons.

Fouad El Bayly, leader of the Islamic Center of Johnstown, said the crescent isn't a holy symbol, but one identified with the lunar Muslim calendar.

"When it comes to a memorial, all mankind sympathizes," he said. "They recognize it was against everybody."

The crescent was created for "formality?" Please. This isn't about "religion per se" but about "sacred spirituality?" Whatever dude.

Look, this was almost surely conceived innocently by an idealistic liberal as symbolic of "peaceful Islam" healing and bonding with those slaughtered for Allah, but this shifty artiste doesn't want to say that outright. He may think that's a noble cause, but he would also think think CAIR has a noble cause. By not admitting any honest intent here, it raises the possibility that the mockery is intentional. It does almost feel like a big practical joke.

(Chris R.)

UPDATE: It looks like another tree artist in Germany did design a memorial swastika tree pattern to be seen best from a high altitude when the leaves changed, but thankfully it wasn't created over a mass Jewish grave to commemorate their deaths.

Forest rangers Monday put their chain saws to a cluster of trees that form a huge swastika when seen from the air, believed to be the legacy of a forest warden who planted them in 1938 out of enthusiasm for Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.

Officials in the eastern state of Brandenburg say the relic near the rural village of Zernikow, some 60 miles north of Berlin, is an eyesore in what is now a nature reserve.

An attempt to make the swastika disappear five years ago failed because when some of the larches were cut down, the others grew to fill in the spaces. The swastika popped up again this fall for anyone flying overhead, when the trees turned dark yellow against the surrounding green pines.

"This is something of a wound, so we really want to do something," state agriculture ministry spokesman Jens-Uwe Schade said. "We want to finally bring this to a conclusion."

Officials reportedly also fear the forest could become a neo-Nazi pilgrimage site.

More here from the 1963 Mohawk swastika sightings.

MORE: A member of the architecture community addresses the design failures in the proposed Flight 93 Memorial.

Okay, so what does this all mean? I would contend that the attitude of "blame America first" is an attitude shared by liberals. It is members of the liberal who often contend that one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter; even Cindy Sheehan is on the record as saying this. I will further surmise that Paul Murdoch's commitment to sustainable design is a sign of his inclination towards the left of center, compounded by the fact that he works, and probably lives in the one of the “bluest” sections of California.

Understanding this, it becomes even more likely that the appearance of this crescent in the Flight 93 Memorial design was intentional based on socio-political inclinations of the design. Being an architectural designer by trade, I knowing how the process of design works, and the implications of it. As architects, we are responsible for every single line (or arc) we draw--not only from a legal standpoint. A crescent shape, created out of Red Maple (Acer rubrum) trees that turn bright red in the fall, forming the red Islamic crescent, effectively during the season in which 9/11 occurred. Accident? No. Ideally speaking, everything is intentional with design. Plantings are not picked at random, this specific species was chosen for its color; perhaps even its timing.

No one outside the design team can say for certain that this Islamic crescent was an intentional design element or not, but I can say with certainty that any design, especially designs for memorials, are more about symbolism than utility and economy; symbolism is everything. A design for a memorial is one of a handful of projects where a designer can take symbolism to the extreme--an opportunity not afforded to most projects and budgets.

The designers, if not initially aware of the presence of the Islamic crescent in the design, became aware of the inference of the crescent in short order, and probably disregarded the relationship or worse yet, silently embraced it. The designers created this design cognizant of its implications in all dimensions--and if they can claim they were not aware of the appearance of the crescent, did not understand what it meant, realized it and did nothing, than they have failed as designers.

Once again, the architecture flowing out of the 9/11 tragedy is being marred with symbolism gone amiss.

And from a reader: Is the Flight 93 crescent really oriented on a direct line from the graves of the fallen (to which the opening points) to Mecca? If so, we can all be certain that it was just a coincidence and the bowl-shaped valley made them do it. Not.

OUR LATEST POST: Mecca, we have a problem.

ROUND-UP

FEMA Director Michael Brown, under fire from all directions and dimensions, may have padded his resume to get the job. PunditGuy: Brown has been thrown under the bus.

This photo is the best summary yet of the whole bus and Red Cross situation.

Songblogger Dr. BLT has two new Katrina-related tunes out this week. Here's one, and here's the other.

The ACLU has been actively thwarting interrogations of terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. When otherwise sound thinkers go out of their way to defend the ACLU, and then the ACLU does things like this, otherwise sound thinkers shouldn't cry about attracting a little criticism themselves. What on earth am I talking about? Go here and follow the links.

Patriots' fans booed Kanye West at last night's NFL season opener, presumably for his anti-Bush rant during the NBC Katrina relief telethon last weekend. Today, I am a Patriots fan.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco apparently doesn't understand her own job. She performed so badly during the Katrina disaster that President Bush contemplated invoking the Insurrection Act to shove her aside and assume control of all disaster relief resources. You can be sure, though, that had the President done that, Gov. Blanco would have played the girl card, the Democrats would have played the party politics card, and the entire left would have played the dictator card. The Insurrection Act might have become more relevant to the situation than any of us should want.

UPDATE: Michael Brown may not have padded his resume. But he is being removed from the ongoing relief effort and brought back to DC.

PAY UP

Sandy the Bergler got slapped with a $50k fine for pilfering classified documents and destroying them. He also has to stay clear of classified material for three years. Then he can resume shredding incriminating evidence he missed the first time.

(via several readers)

AN OPEN LETTER FROM AN AMERICAN CITIZEN

A reader sent this to me tonight. It succinctly captures what a lot of people are thinking and feeling right now.

September 8, 2005

Open Letter to Fellow Americans,

It’s the fashion now, from New Orleans to DC, to write open letters. Here is mine:

We need grownups in Washington, DC, in New Orleans, in Mississippi and Alabama (oh, wait, you’re not hearing too much from the utter devastation of those two states – hmm, might be their two governors are doing their duty.)

In fact, we need grownups across the United States. We face huge problems – we faced many before Hurricane Katrina, but now, we’ve got three out of 50 states out of commission, and the surrounding states picking up our fellow Americans.

I, for one American, do not want to hear elected politicians in DC or in their home states, bickering, pointing fingers, sending form emails in response to their constituents’ concerns. I want them to do their jobs, which is to run the United States. Partisan be damned. I am tired of Congress ducking their responsibility – a clear and present danger – for the 9/11 debacle of our defense and intelligence agencies. And now.

Whether we restructure FEMA or Homeland Security – calling for the heads of those agencies to be fired right now is counter-productive and destructive. Just pause for a moment and think how long it would take to get someone else approved.

Like it or not, we are in the midst of the worst natural disaster we’ve ever experienced. And as bad as it has been for one week, much tougher times are coming. Reclaiming the dead, rebuilding homes, towns, cities, states, battling diseases that are breeding as I write.

Americans, who deal with every day life – work, family, balancing checkbooks, are watching and ACTING, as we shoulder aside the naysayers, roll up our sleeves, and just help – from cash contributions to taking in a neighbor to piling their cars with foodstuffs and heading for the scene.

My fellow Americans, we are at war, we are responding to an unprecedented disaster, with 24/7 coverage (not experienced before). I realize we are all individually responding. When you have ten seconds, write, call, email your representatives and tell them what you expect.

The frustration raging inside me at childish pundits, childish politicians masquerading as adults, is reaching my max. I want grownups in charge. I do not care about your self-esteem, your next election, your ratings. Get out of the way and let us do the job.

Peggie Duggan
Federal Way, WA

GOV. BLANCOUT'S OTHER EXECUTIVE ORDER

Somebody was in tail-covering mode:

EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT EXECUTIVE ORDER NO. KBB 2005 - 31

EMERGENCY EVACUATION BY BUSES

WHEREAS, the Louisiana Homeland Security and Emergency Assistance and Disaster Act, R.S. 29:721, et seq., confers upon the governor of the state of Louisiana emergency powers to deal with emergencies and disasters, including those caused by fire, flood, earthquake or other natural or man-made causes, to ensure that preparations of this state will be adequate to deal with such emergencies or disasters, and to preserve the lives and property of the citizens of the state of Louisiana;


WHEREAS, pursuant to Proclamation No. 48 KBB 2005, a state of emergency was declared and is currently in effect;


WHEREAS, R.S. 29:724(D)(4) provides that the governor, subject to any applicable requirements for compensation, may commandeer or utilize any private property if she finds it necessary to cope with the disaster or emergency;


WHEREAS, there is an immediate need for mass transportation to move citizens to shelters and other safe locations from disaster areas; and


WHEREAS, given the current exigent circumstances, buses are the most reasonable and practical mode of mass transportation to move our citizens to safety;


NOW THEREFORE I, KATHLEEN BABINEAUX BLANCO, Governor of the state of Louisiana, by virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution and laws of the state of Louisiana, do hereby order and direct as follows:

SECTION 1: Each Superintendent of Education for each school district in Louisiana that remains substantially operational following the passage of Hurricane Katrina shall contact the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness at 225-925-3916 and provide an inventory of school buses and bus drivers in their district;

SECTION 2: As determined by the Office of Homeland Security and Emergency
Preparedness, such buses shall be made available to be used as necessary for the mass transportation of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, accompanying law
enforcement personnel, and necessary supplies to from areas of concern to areas of safety;

SECTION 3: The Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness is hereby authorized to commandeer and utilize such buses for such purposes;

SECTION 4: Each Superintendent of Education for each school district in Louisiana that remains substantially operational following the passage of Hurricane Katrina shall coordinate with local law enforcement agencies and peace officers to ensure that at least one peace officer ride in each bus and at least two marked law enforcement vehicles accompany every ten buses;

SECTION 5: The Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness shall make efforts to work with the superintendents and local boards of education to minimize interruption of regular transportation of students;

SECTION 6: R.S. 17:158, relative to parish and city school boards providing free
transportation to students, is hereby suspended until Sunday, September 25,
2005, unless reinstated sooner.

SECTION 7: This Order is effective upon signature and shall continue in effect until amended, modified, terminated, or rescinded by the governor, or terminated by operation of law.


IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have set my hand officially and caused to be affixed the Great Seal of Louisiana, at the Capitol, in the city of Baton Rouge, on this 31st day of August, 2005.


/S/ Kathleen Babineaux Blanco

GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA

ATTEST BY

THE GOVERNOR

/S/ Al Ater

SECRETARY OF STATE

This was issued on August 31. It's an order to commandeer the buses and use them to move people to safety. The storm was already past. The city of New Orleans, and therefore all of those buses we've all been looking at, flooded on the 29th and 30th. By the time this order went out, it was worthless.

I guess the gov needed to sleep on it.

RACIAL LOGIC

By Jacob Weisberg's logic, Katrina's aftermath should persuade more blacks to vote Republican:

Had the residents of New Orleans been white Republicans in a state that mattered politically, instead of poor blacks in city that didn't, Bush's response surely would have been different. Compare what happened when hurricanes Charley and Frances hit Florida in 2004. Though the damage from those storms was negligible in relation to Katrina's, the reaction from the White House was instinctive, rapid, and generous to the point of profligacy. Bush visited hurricane victims four times in six weeks and delivered relief checks personally. Michael Brown of FEMA, now widely regarded as an incompetent political hack, was so responsive that local officials praised the agency's performance.

The kind of constituency politics that results in a big life-preserver for whites in Florida and a tiny one for blacks in Louisiana may not be racist by design or intent. But the inevitable result is clear racial discrimination. It won't change when Republicans care more about blacks. It will change when they have more reason to care.

Let me say first that I don't buy Weisberg's thinking at all. The fact that two other whole states got slammed along with New Orleans, and the sequence of the disaster which put NO last in the timeline, have played a very large role in how FEMA and the Bush adminstration have responded to the disaster. Louisiana's disgraceful, incompetent, petulant, indecisive and just plain lame Gov. Blancout's disastrous role in the apocalypse never even gets a mention from Weisberg--surely it's relevant that the two Republican governors in neighboring states responded better than Blancout, so much so that even NO Mayor Nagin has started blaming her, and not Bush, for keeping supplies from poor people and sitting on evacuation orders until Bush personally asked her to issue them.

But leaving all of that aside, as Weisberg did because none of it helped him make his race baiting points, he says that Republicans don't care about blacks and therefore didn't help majority black New Orleans because Republicans aren't supported by blacks to any extent and don't need to maintain their political support. So then the obvious response from blacks should be to vote Republican. It'll get the President off his vacationing keister faster next time, right, Jake?

Right?

To tell you the sad truth, the Democrats' collective whiny and disgusting response to Katrina has had everything to do with what happened in 2004. In 2000, Gov. George W. Bush only garnered 8 percent of the black vote on his way to winning the White House. In 2004, he jumped up to 11 percent and was comfortably re-elected. If the GOP can even manage to attract 15-20 percent of the black vote, just one in five black voters, the Democrats are doomed. Doomed, I tell you. Pre-Katrina, it was possible to imagine a GOP candidate reaching 15 percent of the black vote. Now...not likely.

Since dropping to near-permanent minority status, the Democrats have no margin for error and cannot afford to lose even one percent more of the black vote without suffering at the polls around the country. Their power at the state and city level will continue to erode. So when Katrina came and they saw lots of suffering black faces on the cable nets, a meme was born: Bush and the Republicans hate blacks and are letting them die.

It didn't matter that Louisiana politics are Democrat dominated, or that the governor and mayor are Democrats or that their failures had contributed mightily to the suffering. Well, I take that back. All of that did matter. And the Democrats couldn't let those facts out without making sure to prevent Bush from getting any kind of traction for being seen to help blacks. Which, absent the race war talk of Al Sharpton et al, that is the image that the nation would have seen. That is also an image that a stricken nation needed to see. We, all of us, needed to see our President responding to a crisis with smooth efficiency. And we would have seen that, because his response to Katrina wasn't out of line with federal responses to other disasters.

The Democrats prevented, consciously and with intent thought out beforehand, letting President Bush be seen as helpful in any way in the middle of a national crisis because they knew it threatened their own political prospects. They let poor black people die in great numbers in order to protect their stranglehold on the black vote. And they then accused Republicans of letting blacks die for racist reasons. The Democrats' performance during Katrina has been the most ghastly display of race-based politics this nation has seen in a long, long time.

That is the truth.

AND ANOTHER THING: Weisberg refers to previous hurricanes, ones for which Bush received praise rather than insurrection. He states that Bush got praise because he helped the victims faster because they were mostly white and therefore Bush supporters, so Bush wanted to help them more than he wanted to help poor, black New Orleans.

Might it be possible that Bush received praise for handling those other disasters because the race hustlers saw no advantage to playing up some nonexistent racial angle? It's kind of hard for Sharpton et al to argue that Bush is a racist for not helping blacks when most of a given storm's victims aren't black. But it's very easy to smear Bush when a natural disaster hits a location that happens to have a mostly black population.

Weisberg never even considers the race hustlers' own unsavory motivations at all. Not a bit. I think their motivations--which mostly amount to keeping themselves rich and relevant--explain quite a lot about the past week and how the story has played.

GOV. BLANCOUT'S EXECUTIVE ORDER

I haven't seen too many people discussing this. It's Executive Order No. KBB 2005-18. It puts the Louisiana National Guard Commander, Bennett C. Landreneau, in charge of the Bayou State's emergency prep and response. When you see Mr. Landreneau on camera praising or cursing anyone for their performance during Katrina, it might be wise to keep this executive order in mind.

(thanks to Tom)

DOGGONE IT

I was going to write a magnum opus about how Congress needs to act like grownups for once, kill off the recently passed and pork-laden $25 billion highway bill and use that money in Katrina relief. And it would've been a stemwinder of an article. But Heritage has beaten me to the story:

If Congress follows its usual pattern, there will be much debate about how much money to send and where to send it, and in the end an initial package totaling some tens of billions of dollars will be passed and signed into the law. But these are extraordinary times, and Congress must rise above the “usual pattern” and show the American people that they too can be just as generous in their own personal sacrifice as their constituents.

One way to show such sacrifice and resolve would be to agree to shift at least half of the $25 billion dollars that the recently enacted highway bill (SAFETEA-LU) dedicates to frivolous pork barrel spending in local communities around the nation. As Mississippi and Louisiana confront the replacement of dozens of wrecked bridges, is it possible that Rep. Don Young (R-AK) could give up one of the two $200 million dollar bridges he secured for his state? Perhaps Alaskans could go without the one that will serve a town of just fifty people, who now ride a ferry? Such an example of leadership and sacrifice by a senior Member like Rep. Young could persuade the rest of the Congress to follow his lead and give up there own wasteful earmarks and pork until the $12 or $13 billion dollars is redirected to those whose need is dire.

I still may write the article--Heritage mentions one slice of pork that demands further examination:

The more than 6,000 earmarks in it add up to nearly $25 billion in money that could now be better used for a more urgent purpose than flower gardens, replica sailing ships, and bus museums. (emphasis added)

Any bets that those museums weren't slated for N'awlins?

(thanks to Peggie)

THE CLUELESS HISTORIAN

Celebrity faux historian Doug Brinkley needs to stick to glossing up John Kerry's past. He has no, and I mean no, grasp on the present:

"If you had to say one line about this, this whole hurricane is about racism. I think if you go to the Astrodome like I've been or if you go to any of the evacuation centers you are going to see the divide between African American community and others. The fact that the Bush administration seem in my mind to behave as if the underclass or as Michael Herrington use to call it, the other America, the poor, the disenfranchised, those without a lot, those that when a hurricane is announced and they are told to evacuate they try to say, how can I evacuate? I don't have a car. I don't own any other way of mode to get out and I'm scared to get put into some bus, leave my animals and money behind.

"...scared to get put into some bus..." So that's the lefty line now? People didn't leave because they were scared to get put into some bus? The only problem with that line of thinking is that they never even had the opportunity to get scared to get put into some bus. The mayor never ordered them into service.

These are, by the way, the very same buses parents put their kids on every morning in sending them to school. I'd think the least likely reaction to seeing a bus bumping down the street with an evacuation order in your mind and a storm on the horizon would be to fear the bus. You'd see it as a saviour, if you had the chance to see it at all. A chance the residents of New Orleans never had. How clueless can a historian be?

The quote is from Imus this morning. Both Imus the Ignoramus and Brinkley agreed that the hurricane was a racist, that Bush is a racist, that the whole country except the people who didn't fire up the buses and the woman who kept the Red Cross from feeding the poor in the dome are all racists. Nagin, Ebbert and Blanco, architects of death on a grand scale, get a pass. The rest of us get whacked.

And Mother Nature has come out of the closet as a Grand Wizard in the KKK. I guess she replaced Bobby Byrd.

(thanks to Sally and friends)

UPDATE: Brinkley is even more clueless than I'd thought.

Another city resident, the historian Douglas Brinkley, remained in New Orleans during the storm. "I was in a building that was built to withstand this type of storm and didn't heed the first notice to evacuate."

A Cat 5 is bearing down on a city that clearly isn't ready for it, and he stays behind. Reader Ward wonders whether the fear of getting put on buses during the mythical bus-borne evac was Brinkley committing a gaffee--accidentally telling the truth. Perhaps, wonders Ward, Brinkley mentally bridged that sentence "...with those poor people." It would then read: "I don't own any other way of mode to get out and I'm scared to get put into some bus...with those poor people...leave my animals and money behind."

I won't even pretend to crawl inside Brinkley's head and speak for him. But that is just about the only way his sentence makes any sense at all.

Whether that was Brinkley's own fear finding voice or not, he did manage to make some sense eventually:

The core problem here is there has been no person in charge. In New York after 9/11 you had Rudy Giuliani, who had strong leadership. I don't think New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has provided that."

That's correct.